my first university days, in those old times at Kiel, to
imagine how I went on afterward in Heidelberg and Leipsic, till I got
an older head under my corps-student's cap. It is true, I soon grew
tired of the ridiculous corps business; but, for the mere sake of not
seeming to play the renegade, I kept on with the old associations even
more shamelessly than before. My three years passed away, and a fourth
beside; I was fully three-and-twenty when I went back into my dear,
dull, little home, and passed my examination to enter the civil
service. How I managed to get on so long without giving you a call,
Heaven knows! As early as the second year after our separation, I was
very near you. I had a trifling reminder of a pistol-duel with a
Russian, here in my left shoulder, and had to go to a watering-place
for my health. In Heligoland I heard that you had moved to Hamburg. I
needn't say that I designed to call upon you on my way back. But,
suddenly, a sad message called me home abruptly. My poor old father had
had an apoplectic stroke, and I found him dead. Then there was all the
dreary necessary business, and, after it all--. But why must we spoil
our first pleasant hour with all these old stories? My dear Hans, if
you had a notion how good it is to be sitting here again by your side,
to smell these roses, and imagine that my life is beginning all over
again--a new life in a better world, free from all fetters and--. But,
by-the-way, you have married, I hear? An actress, was it not? Where did
she come from? I heard in Heligoland--"

The sculptor suddenly rose. "You find me as you left me," he said, his
face darkening quickly; "what is past, let us let it rest. Come out of
the arbor; it is suffocatingly hot under those thick vines."

He went toward the little fountain, held his hands under the slender
stream, and passed them over his brow. Then, for the first time, he
turned to Felix again. His face was once more composed and bright.

"And now tell me what has brought you here, and how long you are going
to stay with me."

"As long as you will have me--for ever and ever--_in infinitum_ if you
will!"

"You are joking. Don't do that, my dear boy. I am so utterly alone
here, in spite of a plenty of good comrades with whom I can share
everything except my most intimate thoughts, that the thought of
beginning our old life again seems far too happy to me to be only made
a jest of."

"But it is my most serious earnest, dear o