form.… Minna! One can indeed call that good fortune!"
He pressed my hand as in a vice.
"Thank you, dear friend!" I murmured and turned away my face from the faint light, which the street lamp threw into the room,"—it is so kind of you, in the midst of your grief. I know how much I sympathise with you …"
We went down the stairs and he kept on talking about Minna. "Well," I thought, "indeed you do wear your heart on your sleeve." And in reality my surmise was right; open-hearted and indiscreet, he expected the same qualities in others.
"Indeed you have reason to consider yourself lucky. Minna, such a girl! How I envy you,—at least, not exactly envy you, though really … I suppose Minna has told you that I was very fond of her, more than a mere friend?"
"No, she has never even hinted at anything of the kind; altogether she has spoken very little about you, though I know she likes you. But I must admit, now you touch upon it yourself, that I have had a suspicion …"
"You see, I never told her, I mean proposed to her, but she felt it; women always do. No, I kept my feelings to myself; I think her heart in those days did not respond to such a feeling. Her father had just died, and also there was something else, but perhaps you know more about it than I.… My mother, in whom I confided,—it's no good hiding anything from her, she looks straight through one, indeed, one can with truth call her a judge of human nature; mother was of the same opinion, however much she would have liked her as a daughter-in-law. Then also I had to go to Leipzig. But I shall never forget her! Well, now you can understand how pleased I am that it should be just you whom she gets."
