The brother, who seemed not to have noticed anything of all this, had continued to speak in his lively, vehement fashion; his words were lost; our hero would have had to have had two lives in order to hear them, for all the one he possessed was in his eyes.  Now he saw his brother rushing away toward the hall.  He thought of detaining him, but it was too late.  In vain he hurried after him up to the door.  There the flower absorbed him again which the girl had left lying for some finder, for a happy one, if he found it for whom it was intended.  And while his lips continued to call softly and mechanically to his brother, who no longer heard him, to keep silence, he was inwardly asking himself:  “Was it really I for whom she laid the flower here?  Did she lay it here for any one?” His heart answered both questions with a happy “Yes,” while at the same time the thing that his brother intended to do troubled him.

If it was a sign of love from her and for him, then it was the last.

Twice he glanced surreptitiously into the hall when the door was opened; he saw her dancing with his brother and then, when they were resting after the dance, he saw his brother talking persuasively to her in his hasty way.  “Now he is talking of me,” he thought, his whole face burning.  He rushed into the shade of the bushes when she left the hall.  His brother took her home.  He followed them at as great a distance as he thought necessary to prevent her seeing him.  When his brother came back from accompanying her he stepped away from the door.  He felt naked with shame.  His brother had noticed him nevertheless.  He said:  “She won’t hear of you yet; I don’t know whether she means it, or whether it is just airs.  I shall meet her again.  No tree falls at one stroke.  But I must confess, you have good taste.  I don’t know where my eyes have been up to now.  She’s away ahead of Beate; and that’s saying a good deal!”

From then on his brother had danced untiringly with Walter’s Christiane and spoken for Apollonius and always, after he had taken her home, he came and gave our hero an account of his efforts on his behalf.  For a long time he was uncertain whether it was only affectation, or whether she really looked with disfavor on our hero.  He repeated conscientiously what he had said in our hero’s praise, and how she had answered his questions and assurances.  He still had hope after our hero had already given it up.  And her behavior toward the latter would have compelled him to realize that he could expect no return of his affection, even if he had not known what answers she gave his brother.  She avoided him wherever she saw him as assiduously as she had formerly seemed to seek him.  And had it really been he whom she had sought before, if indeed she had sought any one?

A hundred times his brother urged him to waylay her and press his own suit.  He exerted all his inventive power to procure him an opportunity of speaking to her alone.  Our hero refused to be urged or to accept his offers.  After all, it was useless.  All that he might accomplish would be to make her still more angry.