first love.… No domestic happiness would quite be able to drive away the image of him, to whom I owed my first consciousness, my first thoughts, my independence, the awakening of my best and purest feelings—a life and feelings which rightly belonged to him. Oh, how fondly precious has not his image been to me—and now it must come as a ghost accusing me of giving all this to another, while he confidently waited for me, worked for us both, for our future! No, no, never can I be really happy or give you such happiness as you deserve!"
I stood terrified and almost stunned by the despair of this outburst; my eyes turned away from hers while I tried to collect my thoughts, and to unravel the tangle into which my mind had been thrown. It was quite plain to me, that a girl with her pure and faithful nature could not help putting the most flattering interpretation possible upon Stephensen's conduct. Already in consequence of his letter with the Elegy by Heine she had held forth his faithfulness as a supposition, and after my interview with him yesterday I had not doubted that he, making use of his knowledge of her heart, would let this very flattering, almost melodramatic, light fall upon the obscure interval of time which separated them. For my part I looked upon this through such very critical glasses that every bit of romantic glamour was taken away; and it seemed to me that in time its true character was sure to become clear to her also, for which reason the danger of the ghost did not seem to me quite so great as she had imagined. But, unfortunately, even I was not quite sure of my case, and I was obliged to admit to myself, that as I was possessed with a very natural antipathy towards Stephensen, it was not impossible that this led me to judge him unfairly. And in that case …
