oing to marry
Dorina. He told him so, one day, plump and plain. Traugott was not a
little alarmed: for he only then began to ask himself what had become
of the object of his journey. Felizitas stood once more vividly before
his memory, and yet he did not feel able to quit Dorina. In some
mysterious way he could not think of ever possessing his vanished love
as a wife. Felizitas seemed a spiritual image, never either to be won,
or lost--eternally present to the spirit--never to be physically gained
and possessed. But Dorina often came to his thoughts as his dear wife.
Sweet thrills permeated him, a gentle glow streamed through his veins.
And yet it seemed a treason to his first love to allow himself to be
bound with new, indissoluble ties. Thus did the most contradictory
feelings strive in his heart. He could not come to a decision. He
avoided the old man carefully, who was under the impression that
Traugott was going to trick him out of his daughter, and took care to
talk everywhere of Traugott's marriage as a settled thing, saying that
otherwise he never would have allowed his daughter to contract an
intimacy so dangerous to her fair fame. One day his Italian blood fired
up, and he told Traugott distinctly that he must either marry Dorina,
or be off about his business, as he could not allow their intimacy to
go on, on its present footing, for another hour. Traugott was vexed and
indignant, and that not with the old man only. His own conduct struck
him as contemptible. It seemed a sin and an abomination to have ever
thought of another than Felizitas. It tore his heart to part from
Dorina, but he broke the tender ties by a mighty effort, and set off as
fast as possible to Naples--to Sorrento.

"He spent a year in the most careful efforts to discover Berklinger and
Felizitas--in vain; nobody knew anything about them. All that he traced
was a faint sort of surmise--based upon what seemed little more than a
legend--that there had once been an old German painter in Sorrento,
several years before. Driven to and fro as if upon a stormy ocean,
Traugott ended by settling down for some time in Naples; and, as he
worked more diligently at his painting again, the longing for Felizitas
grew gentler and milder in his heart. But he never saw a woman at all
resembling her in figure, walk, or bearing, without feeling the loss of
the dear, sweet child most painfully. When painting, he never thought
of Dorina, but always of Felizitas, who