her idle talk to say nevertheless that her heart was with him.  On the other hand, she showed the tenderest sympathy for him.  She longed for a picture of his rooms in the Dorotheenstrasse, where he lived and thought of her.  She had been to see his house in the Kochstrasse from the outside.  She was apparently proud of him, and repeated to him all the flattering remarks which people made on his appearance and cleverness, with as much satisfaction, as if she spoke of one of her own people.  Still all this was only on the surface, and he often had the impression that her feeling for him was weakened at its foundation both by her cold intelligence, and by her pleasure in worldly things.

And he?  Did he love her as he should, before he had the right to bind her to him for life?  His earnestness and exalted morality looked upon marriage as a rash adventure full of alarming secrets.  Was it possible that their two lives should be so blended together that they should withstand every accident of fate?  He meant to give himself entirely, to keep nothing back, and to be true in body and soul.  Was he sure that he could keep the vow, and that no sinful wishes should come to break it?  Already he was thinking that he might not be always happy with her.  Certainly her beauty, her wit, the attraction of her fresh, healthy youth charmed him, and when she spoke to him with her sweet voice, he had to shut his eyes and hold himself together, not to fall at her feet and bury his head in her dress.  But he feared for himself, for his honor, that a sensual attraction should hardly outlast possession.  His innermost being was painfully troubled.  Never an elevated word from her!  Never a deep and serious thought!  Often he reflected that the faults of her upbringing were the inevitable results of her life in the midst of idle people, and that it would be possible to deepen and widen her mind and sensations.  If he could only go with her to a desert island, alone with the loneliness of nature, and could live between the heavens and the sea!  How soon then could he inspire her thoughts and bring her to his own standpoint.  Then the fear would take hold of him that she could not do without theaters, frocks, soirees, and balls, and under the recent impression of the New-Year’s party he became despondent, and said to himself, “No.  The life of show and appearance has too great a hold on her, and I shall never be able to give her what she wants, and what seems necessary to her happiness.”  Paul’s opinion, which he gave on the way home, struck him sorrowfully.  One of the richest “parties” in Berlin!  Would not people say he was marrying her for her money?  What people said was really nothing to him, and he considered himself free to act as his innermost judgment counseled.  But might not Loulou herself believe that her father’s money added something to her attractions?  He recognized that this feeling indicated a weakness, a want of self-reliance, but the idea that she might