"I thank you for your frankness, Benno," he said. "It would have been perfectly excusable if you had never taken me into consideration, but had acted only as your father's son. I know how great is the regard you thus show me."
Benno cast down his eyes; he was conscious that these thanks were undeserved. It was not to spare his friend that he would have buried that discovery in oblivion.
"You understand that I cannot possibly move in the affair," he rejoined. "I must leave it to you to speak with your future father-in-law----"
Reinsfeld gazed at him in surprise. "You will not?
"No, Benno; Grouau has openly declared war to him, as you tell me, therefore he is fully prepared; and, moreover, my relations with him are no longer what they were. We are parted once for all."
The doctor's amazement was inexpressible: "Parted? And your betrothal with Fräulein Alice----"
"Is at an end. I cannot give you a detailed explanation of the matter. Nordheim has shown himself to me also,--as what you now know him to be. He endeavoured to impose upon me conditions entirely inconsistent, in my opinion, with my honour; therefore I was obliged to retire."
Reinsfeld still stared at him, bewildered; he could not understand how the man who had once staked everything upon this connection could speak thus composedly of his shattered hopes.
"And Alice is free?" he managed to ask at last.
"Yes. But what is the matter with you? What is it?"
Benno had started up in extreme agitation: "Wolf, you never loved your betrothed. I am sure of it, or you could not speak so coldly and calmly of losing her. You do not even know what you are losing, for you never appreciated what you possessed."
There was so passionate a reproach in his words that they betrayed everything. Elmhorst was startled, and gazed at the doctor half incredulously: "What does this mean? Benno, can it be--what? do you love Alice?"
The young physician's honest blue eyes sparkled as he looked into those of his friend: "No need to reproach me with it, Wolf. I have never spoken a word to your betrothed that you might not have heard, and when I saw how impossible it was to struggle against my love, I made up my mind to depart. Do you suppose I would ever have accepted the position in Neuenfeld, which I more than suspected was the result of the president's influence, if any other way out of the difficulty had been possible? There was nothing else to do if I wished to leave Oberstein."