I walked up to the group. On the sight of me Victoria suppressed her kindliness toward her husband; she did not wish me to make the mistake of supposing that she was content. William Adolphus looked supremely ashamed and uncomfortable. The child, being suddenly snatched by her mother, puckered lips and brows and threatened tears. Elsa sprang up with heightened colour and stood in an attitude of uneasiness. Why, yes, I had disturbed their happiness very effectually.
"I didn't mean to interrupt you," I pleaded.
"Nonsense; we weren't doing anything," said Victoria. "I'll show you your rooms, Elsa, shall I?"
Elsa, I believe, would have elected to be shown something much more alarming than a bedroom in order to escape from my presence. She accepted Victoria's offer with obvious thankfulness. The two went off with the baby. William Adolphus, still rather embarrassed, took out a cigar. We sat down side by side and both began to smoke. There was a silence for several moments.
"She's a pretty girl," observed my brother-in-law at last.
"Seems a bit shy, though," he suggested, with a sidelong glance at me.
"She seemed to be getting on very well with you and the baby."
"Oh, yes, she was all right then," said William Adolphus.
"I suppose," said I, "that I frighten her rather."
William Adolphus took a long pull at his cigar, looked at the ash carefully, and then gazed for some moments across the river toward Waldenweiter. It was a beautiful evening, and my eyes followed in the same direction. Thus we sat for quite a long time. Then William Adolphus gave a laugh.
I should be doing injustice to my manners and (a more serious offence) distorting truth, if I represented myself as a shy gaby, afraid or ashamed to make love because people knew the business on which I was engaged. Holding a position like mine has at least the virtue of curing a man of such folly; I had been accustomed to be looked at from the day I put on breeches, and, thanks to unfamiliarity with privacy, had come not to expect and hardly to miss it. The trouble was unhappily of a deeper and more obstinate sort, rooted in my own mind and not due to the covert stares or open good-natured interest of those who surrounded me. There is a quality which is the sign and soul of high and genuine pleasure, whether of mind or body, of sight, feeling, or imagination; I mean spontaneity. This characteristic, with its included incidents of unexpectedness, of suddenness, often of unwisdom and too entire absorption in the moment, comes, I take it, from a natural agreement of what you are with what you do, not planned or made, but revealed all at once and full-grown; when the heart finds it, it knows that it is satisfied. The action fits the agent--the exercise matches the faculty. Thenceforward what you are about does itself without your aid, but pours into your hand the treasure that rewards success, the very blossom of life. There may be bitterness, reproaches, stings of conscience, or remorse. These things are due to other claims and obligations, artificial, perhaps, in origin, although now of binding force. Beneath and beyond them is the self-inspired harmony of your nature with your act, sometimes proud enough to claim for itself a justification from the mere fact of existence, oftener content to give that question the go-by, whispering softly, "What matters that? I am."