Have you anybody in Paris who could arrange
that for you?"
"No."
"Then I will do it. And even if you were to let the things go, it
would be no great loss. Above all things, no renewing of old
fetters. This lackey takes a healthy enough view of the matter, for
all his cynicisms. You must not take it too tragically. You have
passed through your heart crisis--it comes to most of us--only with
you it has happened late, and under unpropitious circumstances. That
has tended to make it more severe than is usually the case. But now,
let it be past and over, though naturally it will take some little
time for your mind to regain its normal balance. What I regret most
in the affair is, that it precludes the idea of marriage for you for
some time to come, and I had wished that so much for you. As long as
the fascinations of this siren are fresh in your memory, no
respectable German girl will have any attraction for you, and the
love she is able to offer you will seem flat and insipid."
"You only speak of me," Wilhelm ventured to remark, "but that is not
the worst side of the story; what weighs most heavily on my mind is,
that I have broken my faith with her."
"Do not let that worry you," Schrotter replied. "You were in such a
position as to be forced to act in self-defense.
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