Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/223

 Minna slapped me over my fingers.

"After all, it was not impossible! They have wolves in Poland. I have stayed with a cousin who is married there, and have heard them howl. Yes, just you look at me, such an one am I!—By the way, why did you not take to forestry? I should have liked to be a forester's wife!"

"Well, you ought to have let me know in those days. But you forget, then we should not have met."

"Why not? You might have come to the college in Tharandt. Those who are to meet will meet."

"Fatalist!"

"Oh, you ought to know I am that! But, to be serious, I should think it would have suited you well."

"I also had a taste for it; it was only later I wanted to be an architect, and it had already been decided that I should be one when my mother's brother, who is a director of a large china-factory in London, offered to help me, if I would be a Polytechnic student. Well, it was more advantageous, and my father did not think we ought to lose the chance. Besides, he thought that it would be a good thing for me to take to a practical life, and not become such a lonely misanthrope and dreamer as he accused himself of being."

"I am sure you will be that all the same. You are my sweet enthusiast. And with all this you have not told me a word of those with whom you have been in love. Do you not know that it is the custom for all engaged couples at once to boast to one another of their former sweethearts? To have confessed before the engagement is an exception that confirms the rule, but you seem to imagine that you can break it altogether."

"Not at all. Be it confessed to you under seven-sealed