He wished to think only of Rebecca, who had added sound hints to her father’s and the host’s experienced advice; but, do what he could, it was another’s image that haunted him.  It was the winning one of the aristocratic singer.  Again he beheld her matchless shape, her caressing and enthralling eyes, her supple undulations in the waltz and her shimmering golden curls.  And whatever the sounds in the street, where there seemed more footfalls than before that evening, all though actual, were overpowered and formed the burden to the ghostly but delightful strains from that silvery voice.  He was not only at the age to be impressionable, but he had not known one of those college amorettes which may be as innocent as a page of a scientific text-book.  No woman even in the poetry had caused him to vibrate in the untouched heart-chords like this unexpected star in the firmament of beer fumes and tobacco smoke!  But it was not joyous to muse upon this vision for he had no doubt that she marked a new starting-point in his life.

Did he love her, or Rebecca?  They had appeared to him so closely together that he was confused.  He viewed them as a double-star, without yet having the coolness to separate them.  He was a man to love once only, and there is but one love.  There are different phases of it as there are different lodgers in the same house; they do not know each other, but they come in and go forth by the same staircase-way.

Of this he was instinctively certain that if he loved Kaiserina, she would guide him in altogether another direction than he had looked and whither his proud and admiring professors had pointed.  Enormous wealth in our days is to the monopolist, immense fame to the specialist.  To rise above contestants, one must be patient, resigned, long toiling and abhorrent of the social ties which fetter one when most of the time is demanded to solve a problem, and pester one to recite the two or three letters he has learnt when he ought to study till he masters the entire alphabet.  A man must immolate himself.

Oh, he had been so happy at whiles with the thought, accounted providential, that he stood alone, with no one to distract him, to impose burdens on him and to claim a right to make inroads on his precious hours.  He loved the loneliness in which he sank when he stepped out of the lecture-room and the amphitheatre.  He had not felt the need, which others confessed, of some one with whom to share griefs, debate enigmas and communicate projects.  Since he saw Rebecca, he had, indeed, had an almost momentary glimpse of a home where a dashing woman, moving silently and airily, guarded his meditations from the external plagues.  Such a woman was created to comfort, cheer and encourage if he flagged.  But the love she inspired was ideal, perceived hazily during the hours when he was out of health, and divined rather than watched her tender ministrations.