Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/241

 feelings that had been aroused to battle against later ones, by which she was tied to me.

How safely I had rested in my happiness! And now a stranger had told me, in so many words, that he hoped to tear it from me. And as far as I was concerned? Had I laughed in his face or turned my back on him as if he were a poor fool? No, I had entered into a quarrel with him, as if my happiness needed defending; still worse, I had absolutely arranged with him how best to act in the future, and in this way I had agreed to the possibility of his gaining the victory, and admitted that I did not already possess this happiness, but had first to win it.

The danger was not only possible but actual; it was upon me, and I groaned under its weight as if possessed by a nightmare.

How safely I had rested in my happiness! And yet it occurred to me now that I had in reality always suspected danger, and that there had always been a shadow hovering over the clear sunshine of this time. I remember how this suspicious letter had awakened me from the intoxicating bliss of the first kiss. I suddenly felt again the unaccountable terror which came upon me in Schandau when I heard her letter fall into the box. On my first lonely visit to the home of her childhood, a feeling of jealousy had overcome me in a manner that now appeared quite ghost-like. Then again, hardly had I enjoyed the bliss of reunion, before it was embittered by Minna's sadness, and by his reproachful letter which had created a foolish jealousy in me, and a less foolish fear; how persistently I had begged her to leave it unanswered, and she had replied, "I must," with her peculiar fatalism that now also seemed to have infected me. And the following day, when she had written and shown me this letter, and we had sat together in the