Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/259

 very upset to hear through his mother that his dear old father had not yet got rid of the cold which he had caught in Prague; he feared that his mother might be keeping something back in order not to alarm him, and asked me to say openly what I thought of his father's illness.

I was, of course, too selfishly absorbed in my own grief to let old Hertz's cough appear fatal to me. Therefore this inquiry did not give me much thought, whereas I pondered, with an interpreter's profundity, over his congratulatory remarks, and tried to imagine that they were rather forced. The honest Immanuel Hertz began to have an especial interest for me. I remembered how Minna had always avoided speaking of him; and Stephensen's remark of last evening regarding Minna and him, seemed, though quoted as an example, to have something behind it. All this pointed in the same direction; and, besides, to know Minna and to love her were in my eyes two things so indissolubly united, that my supposition very soon grew into a certainty.

So he had burnt also himself!—How had he got over it? He was surely no easy-going character, but perhaps he had a more self-controlled than passionate disposition, and therefore the wound would hardly have been incurable. New surroundings and hard work had, anyhow, surely been the remedy for him also.

However detestable the thought was that for me also this panacea might be necessary, I, nevertheless, gradually lost myself in fantastic English dreams of the future, which, by the way, left out the most important item—the work—as something taken for granted; but as a reward I imagined my own dear self, two or three years older, galloping in a grand cavalcade through Hyde Park (which I supposed to be like "Grosser Garten"), dancing at balls, which were