“What are you thinking of?” cried Schrotter, when Wilhelm stopped speaking, and looked at him in anxious expectation.  “Your only plan now is to keep dark.  If, notwithstanding your silence, they write to you again, I would advise you to burn the letters unread.  That will demand a certain amount of fortitude, no doubt, but as the letters will come to my address, I will do it for you, if you authorize me.”

Wilhelm tried hard to make up his mind.

“No, do not burn them unread,” he said, after a pause; “open the letters, and then judge for yourself, in each case, whether you will let me know the whole or part of the contents.”

“Always the same want of will power!” returned Schrotter.  “First you free yourself, and then have not the courage to burn your ships behind you.  Believe me, it is best that you should have no further news from Paris, and after some months you can send for your things through a third person.  Have you anybody in Paris who could arrange that for you?”

“No.”

“Then I will do it.  And even if you were to let the things go, it would be no great loss.  Above all things, no renewing of old fetters.  This lackey takes a healthy enough view of the matter, for all his cynicisms.  You must not take it too tragically.  You have passed through your heart crisis—­it comes to most of us—­only with you it has happened late, and under unpropitious circumstances.  That has tended to make it more severe than is usually the case.  But now, let it be past and over, though naturally it will take some little time for your mind to regain its normal balance.  What I regret most in the affair is, that it precludes the idea of marriage for you for some time to come, and I had wished that so much for you.  As long as the fascinations of this siren are fresh in your memory, no respectable German girl will have any attraction for you, and the love she is able to offer you will seem flat and insipid.”

“You only speak of me,” Wilhelm ventured to remark, “but that is not the worst side of the story; what weighs most heavily on my mind is, that I have broken my faith with her.”

“Do not let that worry you,” Schrotter replied.  “You were in such a position as to be forced to act in self-defense.  It would have been inexcusable in you to have stayed any longer where you were.  For a liaison of that kind is only conceivable when the man loves the woman very deeply.  You, my friend, did not love the lady at all.  If you have any doubts about it in your own mind, you may take my word for it—­had you loved her, you would not have parted from her.  You would, if necessary, have carried her off from Paris, and continued to live with her in some world-forgotten spot, as you did at St. Valery.  Or you would have gone off to the Philippines, and fought her husband to the death, in order to gain free possession of her or die in the attempt.  That is how love acts when it is of that elemental force which alone can justify such relations before the higher natural tribunal of morality.  But if your love is not strong enough to prompt you to do these things, then it is immoral, and must be shaken off.”