I still faltered, and already the favourable minute had slipped by.
"See, you hesitate, you dare not!" she exclaimed. "And still you have only us two to consider. The third, to whom you would do the greatest harm, is to you only a stranger, yes, even a man you hate.… Then consider how dreadful this choice must be for me, as I know that to whichever side I turn, I must cause unhappiness to one I love."
"It is just that which makes it so difficult for me to put myself in your place. I do not understand this.… You say you love me, I feel it, I will not doubt it, but at the same time you mean that you love Stephensen. It is a problem to me. I do not think that what you feel now for Stephensen is love at all, but only remembrance of past love, and that certainly is too frail ground on which to build a matrimonial life, and especially so, when a new passion has sprung up in opposition to the old one."
Minna shook her head.
"You love, really love, two men? Impossible."
"I do not know what is called possible and impossible, my friend! But consider all that you know yourself and then acknowledge, even if you cannot believe it, that I must love him. I have shown you, as well as I could, what he has been to me, you know that my love was constant during the long separation, yes, in spite of my belief that his feelings had changed, you saw—it was indeed the first you saw of me—how even a poor dictionary could give nourishment to my enthusiastic remembrances by teaching me words of his language, and by creating the illusion that I was learning it in order to speak with him.… And how could I, only some weeks after this, have grown indifferent to him! If I had heard something disparaging
