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Updated: June 3, 2025
If I seemed happy to be near you, it was because I told myself how happy my friend would be when he could call you his own; if you seemed to read warmth and tenderness when I looked at you, it was because I was and am so grateful to you for so happily influencing Paul." While he was speaking Malvine had sunk back in her corner, and had closed her eyes with a deep sigh.
Malvine smiled as she caught sight of the little idyll, and turning to Wilhelm, who was gazing dreamily into the quiet sunny beauty of the surrounding scene: "Can you imagine any more delightful occupation on a spring day like this," she said, "than to go love-making like those two little people over there?" A shadow passed over Wilhelm's face.
But it went against the grain to put any constraint on the girl, and he felt that he would be ashamed to answer "No," if Frau Brohl were to ask him if he had already spoken to Malvine.
It was a sin to stay indoors on such a lovely afternoon, Malvine declared, and so proposed that they should go out to the terrace overlooking the water and sit there till Paul came home.
The windmill moved its long restless arms, as if to welcome her as mistress here; the one-storied dwelling house, raised on stone steps, lay there hospitably built on a raised terrace, with its number of large well-lighted rooms opening a vista of peace and happiness to Malvine, and she thought it all so delightful that she would have liked to send for her furniture from Hamburg and stay there.
Malvine has designs upon you, she wants to get you married. If you came with me you would be the hunter, but if you stay here you will find yourself in the position of the game." "And if he is," retorted Malvine, "it is surely the better part to let yourself be caught by a pretty girl than to go and shoot poor hares and wild ducks."
"And you will teach me to ride, won't you, uncle? Papa has no time." "But I don't know how to ride myself," returned Wilhelm with a smile. Willy looked up disappointed. "What can you do then?" "Be a good boy now," Malvine broke in, "and leave uncle in peace and go back to the nursery. You shall have him again later on."
Then if he were to go in a straightforward way to Malvine, and say, "I can no longer hide from you that I love you, and that I want you to be my wife, will you consent?" there was a great deal of risk in that, for if she misjudged her own feelings, and said that she loved some one else, and so could not listen to him, the rupture between them would be accomplished, and it would be no use to him if later she found out that she had been mistaken in her feelings.
Malvine was not inaccessible to such arguments, as Paul was really sympathetic to her. Soon her tears ceased to flow, and her sighs became fainter and fainter. In two days' time she regained her appetite, signs which Frau Brohl noticed, and quickly imparted to Paul.
"I must ask more from you than that, my poor Wilhelm. Merely staying away is too passive. You must act. I want you to talk to Malvine, and somehow explain to her that you don't love her." "How can I possibly do that?" cried Wilhelm, really startled. "I should have no right! If she laughed in my face and called me a fool and a lout, I should feel I deserved it."
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