This story was disentangled from letters, conversations, accounts of
opinions in the form of monologues, interviews, visits, and
descriptions of sea-voyages; all sufficiently commonplace. But what
excitement these daily effusions showed! What boundless happiness
about kisses, what cries of anguish when the storm broke! Would it
not be better to commit suicide and die together? Was it possible
that this quiet man with his apathetic calm could ever have been
through these stormy times? It did not seem credible, and Schrotter
seemed conscious of the immense difference between the man who had
written the book and the man who now read it. His voice had a
slightly ironical sound, and he parodied some of the scenes in
reading them, by exaggerating the pathos. But this could not last
long. The real feeling which sighed and sobbed between the pages
made itself felt, and carried him back from the cold present to the
storm-heated past; he became interested, then grave, and if he had
not suddenly shut the book with a bang when he came to the place
where his faithless love was married, who knows--
At all events, Wilhelm had not smiled once; his eyes even showed
signs of tears. Schrotter took the book into the other room, and
when he came back every trace of emotion in look and manner had
vanished.
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