Was it calculation, was it her natural instinct?—­suffice it to say that Pilar never by any chance alluded in their conversations to her past.  She was fond of talking, and talked a great deal, and her conversation was always startling, original and vivacious; her power of imagination as lively as her sparkling eyes, springing from the nearest object to the furthest, from the ordinary to the sublime, but never one word escaped her which might remind Wilhelm that she had gone through confessed and unconfessed experiences of every kind, and reached the turning-point of her existence without him.  Her life, it would appear, had only begun with the moment at which he had risen upon her horizon.  What went before that was torn out of the book of memory—­one scarcely noticed the gaps where the pages were missing.  She did all she could to make him forget that she was a stranger to him, and to strengthen in him the delusion that she belonged to him, that she was one with him, that it had always been so.  She took possession of his past, she crept into his ideas and sentiments; she wanted to know everything about him, down to the smallest details.  He must tell her about every day, every hour of his existence; she made the acquaintance of his entire circle of friends; she loathed Loulou, she adored Schrotter, she went into raptures over gentle, refined Bhani, she smiled at Paul Haber and his well-dressed Malvine, and her inventive grandmamma; she determined to send good Frau Muller (who had looked after Wilhelm for ten years like a mother) a beautiful Christmas present.  She could make personal remarks on all his friends and acquaintances, and her only trouble was that she knew no German.  What would she not have given to be able to read the letters he wrote or received, to converse with him in his mother-tongue!  She loved and admired the French language, which, although she retained the ineradicable accent of her country, she spoke as fluently as Spanish; but now, for the first time, she felt something akin to hatred against it for being the one remaining barrier—­certainly a very slight and scarcely perceptible one—­between herself and Wilhelm, which forever drew his attention to the fact that she was not naturally a part of his life, and prevented their absolute union, the growing together of their souls.  She therefore determined to learn German as soon as she returned to Paris, and, if need be, to stay for some length of time in Germany in order to master the language quickly and thoroughly.

She thought and spoke much of the future, and in all her dreams, plans, and resolves Wilhelm was always, and as a matter of course, the central figure and sharer of her life.  In him her life found its consummation she had him fast, and would never let him go.