The Indian Lily and Other Stories. Hermann Sudermann

protest he had once uttered as merely a jest, perhaps even an ill-considered one. But she said: "Let be, it is as well."

      They conversed, as they had often done, of the perished days of their old love. They spoke like two beings who have long conquered all the struggles of the heart and who, in the calm harbour of friendship, regard with equanimity the storms which they have weathered.

      This way of speaking had gradually, and with a kind of jocular moroseness, crept into their intercourse. The exciting thing about it was the silent reservation felt by both: We know how different things could be, so soon as we desired. To-day, for the first time, this game at renunciation seemed to become serious.

      "How strange!" he thought. "Here we sit who are dearest to each other in all the world and a kind of futile arrogance drives us farther and farther apart."

      Alice arose.

      He kissed her, as was his wont, upon hand and forehead and noted how she turned aside with a slight shiver. Then suddenly she took his head in both her hands and kissed him full on the lips with a kind of desperate eagerness.

      "Ah," he cried, "what is that? It's more than I have a right to expect."

      "Forgive me," she said, withdrawing herself at once. "We're poverty stricken folk and haven't much to give each other."

      "After what I have just experienced, I'm inclined to believe the contrary."

      But she seemed little inclined to draw the logical consequences of her action. Quietly she gave him his wonted cigarette, lit her own, and sat down in her old place. With rounded lips she blew little clouds of smoke against the table-cover.

      "Whenever I regard you in this manner," he said, carefully feeling his way, "it always seems to me that you have some silent reservation, as though you were waiting for something." "It may be," she answered, blushing anew, "I sit by the way-side, like the man in the story, and think of the coming of my fate."

      "Fate? What fate?"

      "Ah, who can tell, dear friend? That which one foresees is no longer one's fate!"

      "Perhaps it's just the other way."

      She drew back sharply and looked past him in tense thoughtfulness. "Perhaps you are right," she said, with a little mysterious sigh. "It may be as you say."

      He was no wiser than he had been. But since he held it beneath his dignity to assume the part of the jealous master, he abandoned the search for her secrets with a shrug. The secrets could be of no great importance. No one knew better than himself the moderateness of her desires, no lover, in calm possession of his beloved, had so little to fear as he. …

      They discussed their plans for the Summer. He intended to go to the North Sea in Autumn, an old affection attracted her to Thuringia. The possibility of their meeting was touched only in so far as courtesy demanded it.