ntide shooting. Within all the other young people
were dancing; he walked happily round outside the house in which he
knew her to be dancing. Even now he still felt embarrassed with girls
and women and did not know how to talk to them; at that time he had
felt even more so. How dearly he would have loved to tell her--how
much he had to tell her, when he was alone, and how well he knew how
to say it; and if chance ordained that he met her alone (it was
wonderful how busy chance seemed to be in arranging such meetings) the
thought that now the moment had come drove all the blood to his heart,
the words from his tongue back into their hiding-place in the depths
of his soul. Thus it had been when, her cheeks still glowing from the
dance, she had come out of the house alone. She seemed to be concerned
only with getting cool; she fanned herself with her white scarf, but
her cheeks only grew the redder. He felt that she had seen him, that
she expected him to come nearer; and it was the knowledge that he
understood her that dyed her cheeks redder--that drove her, as he
hesitated, back again into the hall. Perhaps, too, she had heard a
third person coming. His brother came out of another door of the hall.
He had seen the two standing silently opposite each other, perhaps had
also seen the girl's blush. "Are you looking for Beate?" asked our
hero to hide his embarrassment. "No," answered his brother, "she is
not at the dance--and it's just as well. Nothing can come of it, after
all; I must get another--and until I find one, Bohemian beer is my
sweetheart."

There was something wild in his brother's speech. Our hero looked at
him amazed and at the same time disturbed. "Why can nothing come of
it?" he asked. "And what is the matter with you?"

"Oh, yes, you think I ought to be like you, pious and patient so long
as there is no thread on your coat. But I am another kind of fellow,
and if anybody upsets my calculations I have to let off steam. Why can
nothing come of it? Because the old man in the blue coat won't have
it."

"Father called you into the little garden yesterday--"

"Yes, and raised his white eyebrows, which are drawn with a ruler, an
inch and a half. 'I thought it was so. You are going with Beate, the
collector's daughter. That comes to an end today!'"

"Is it possible? And why?"

"Did you ever know old Blue-coat to give any 'why'? And did you ever
ask him 'But why, father?' He didn't say so, but I know why it ha