Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/232

 deeply and sighing. "What does this mean?" I thought. The voices in the billiard-room had grown more noisy; the musical member sang with sentimental tremor on the long notes: "Gute Nacht, du mein 'he-rz-iges Kind," and several voices joined in, howling the syllable "herz" in a prolonged discord. Stephensen smiled, passed his hand over his eyes, and then looked at me vacantly.

"You do not understand me," he began, and his lisping voice had again attained its gentle, rather sugary tone. "What was it you remarked? I see, that she had only used her liberty, and that it ought not to annoy me. But this is not the point! I do not feel at all wronged. And it is not the fact that she has used her liberty, as you so strikingly observed, not at all. If I had heard that she had become engaged to a young man whom she had known for a long time, with whose family she had associated, and who was in such a position that he could soon marry her, for instance the son of this Jew where she visits so often, I don't remember"

"Hertz, I suppose you mean?"

As a mocking chorus they howled in the billiard-room—"he-rz-iges Kind."

"That is it, Hertz; of course she could have married him, and why not? Not a brilliant match, but a solid one. Well, I should have been resigned, and should have silently acquiesced. Indeed, it would have been a case in which my consent would neither have been asked nor required," he added, with a rather self-sufficient irony.

"Your last remark appears to me very sound; would it not also be applicable in the present instance?"

"Not quite. Just place yourself in my position. Minna and I parted as friends, who knew that they were more than friends, not really bound in any way, but with