absurd. Yet I did not put it from me; I had been well tutored in
the strength of family arrangements, and the force of destiny had been
brought home to me on several occasions. I had no doubt at all that my
visit to Bartenstein was part of a deliberate plan. The person who
contrived my meeting with Elsa had a shrewd knowledge of my character;
he knew that ideas long present in my mind became as it were domiciled
there, and were hard to expel. I discovered afterward without surprise
that the stay with my relatives was added to my tour at Prince von
Hammerfeldt's suggestion.

Many men, or youths bordering on manhood, have seen their future brides
in short frocks and unmitigated childhood, but they have not been aware
of what was before them. I was at once amused and distressed; my humour
was touched, but life's avenue seemed shortened. Even if it were not
Elsa it would be some other little girl, now playing with her toys and
rolling down banks. Imagination was not elastic enough to leap over the
years and behold the child transformed. I stuck in the present, and was
whimsically apprehensive of a child seen through a magnifying glass,
larger, but unchanged in form, air, and raiment. Was this my fate? And
for it I must wait till the perfected beauties who had smiled on me
passed on to other men, and with them grew old--aye, as it seemed, quite
old. I felt myself ludicrously reduced to Elsa's status; a long boy, who
had outgrown his clothes, and yet was no nearer to a man.

My trouble was, perhaps unreasonably, aggravated by the fact that Elsa
did not take to me. I did my best to be pleasant; I made her several
gifts. She accepted my offerings, but was not bought by them; myself she
considered dull. I had not the flow of animal spirits that appeals so
strongly to children. I played with her, but her young keenness detected
the cloven hoof of duty. She told me I need not play unless I liked.
Cousin Elizabeth apologized for me; Elsa was gentle, but did not change
her opinion. The passage of years, I reflected, would increase in me all
that the child found least to her taste. I was, as I have said, unable
to picture her with tastes changed. But a failure of imagination may
occasionally issue in paradoxical rightness, for the imagination relies
on the common run of events which the peculiar case may chance to
contradict. As a fact, I do not think that Elsa ever did change greatly.
I began to be sorry for her as well as for mysel