Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/236

 eyes. It struck me that the most natural and, after all, the most proper thing to do, would be to jump at each other and fight like a couple of tigers, instead of which we should no doubt continue to argue and perhaps even drink our beer together and politely say good-night when we parted. This consideration made me so irritated with the situation that I recovered my control. "Since we have begun, let us play the comedy to the end," I thought. Pushing the table away I freed myself from my closed-in position, in which I felt as if I was besieged, and began to walk up and down the room. Our neighbours sang with Teutonic enthusiasm "Die Wacht am Rhein."

"What the deuce, then, do you want?" I exclaimed at last. "Perhaps you think you can make me give her up?"

"Oh no, I don't ask impossibilities."

"Really not! So, after all, you grasp that it is impossible?"

"Of course, for the same reason that the Nürnberger could not hang somebody—they had first to get him."

"I know I have got Minna, just as I know she has got me."

"Those are mere sayings and even antiquated sayings. No human being can get and own another. Do you really think your engagement is going to frighten me? As if I could not long ago have been engaged to her."

"More fool you not to have been so!"

"Perhaps you are right. But I still have a chance, and she will have to choose between us."

"She has chosen."

"No, that's just what she has not done. Under the supposition that I would not marry her, she has given you a promise. Dare you say that you would have been