which seemed those of another than himself, feelings which shamed him, and nobody whom he could love—until Agnes came! "Agnes! my sweet Agnes, you do not know how much I love you!" But she would have to know. He felt that he would never again be able to tell her so well as in this hour, and he wrote a letter. He wrote that he, too, had waited for her these three years, and that he had had no hope because she was too fine, too good, too beautiful for him; that he had said what he did about Mahlmann out of cowardice and spite, that she was a saint, and, now that she had condescended to him, he lay at her feet. "Lift me up, Agnes, I can be strong, I know I can, and I will dedicate my whole life to you!" He began to cry, pressing his face into the sofa cushion where her perfume still lingered, and sobbing like a child he fell asleep.
In the morning, it is true, he was astonished and irritated at not finding himself in bed. His great adventure came back to his mind and sent a delicious thrill through his blood to his heart. At the same time the suspicion seized him that he had been guilty of unpleasant exaggerations. He re-read his letter. It was all right and a man could really lose his head when he suddenly had an affair with such a fine girl. If she had only been there now he would have treated her tenderly. Still it was better not to send that letter. It was imprudent in every way. In the end Papa Göppel would intercept it. … Diederich shut the letter up in his desk. "I forgot all about eating yesterday!" He ordered a substantial breakfast. "I did not smoke either in order to preserve her perfume. But that's absurd; such things aren't done." He lit a cigar and went off to the laboratory. He resolved to release what was weighing on his heart in music rather than in words, for such lofty words were unmanly and uncomfortable. He hired a piano and tried his hand at Schubert and Beethoven with much more success than at his music lessons.
