"Is that the report? Well, no one ever expected or took it for granted that _I_ should become a celebrity!" Eugen understood the reproach. "But it was expected of me, you mean? Yes, I did promise you, in those days, to begin a greater work. I have made plans and sketches enough; but--our life is so disturbing, so full of changes--hitherto I have always wanted leisure and quiet to carry them out." "And the necessary desire to work." "Well, if you like, the desire too. The dreams of one's youth, with which one surrounds everything, come to an end at last. In reality, there is not much in art, or in happiness, or, indeed, in life altogether!" He leaned back in his chair with an expression of the greatest weariness. Hermann gave no answer; but Eugen felt what lay in the grave, searching glance with which he regarded him. "You think my observation strange?" "From your lips, yes. Any one, to whom life has brought nothing but disappointments, may speak so; you, who enjoy all its gifts, have no right to." "And when I find that these wonderful gifts, this dream of happiness, are all illusions, is not my disappointment as great?" Hermann got up and took a turn through the room-- "I hoped that, at least, your marriage with Antonie would be a happy one," said he, after a pause. Eugen was silent. "Then you are not happy?" Reinert made an impatient movement. "I do not know. She often torments me terribly with her varying moods, her jealousy, and then--I have to hear often enough, whom I have to thank for all, what she has sacrificed for my sake." An expression of inexpressible scorn curled Hermann's lips. "Ah! so it has got as far as that! She throws that in your face, and you endure it?" "Have I a weapon against it?" "It lay with you to make yourself independent. I imagined that just your wife's rank and riches would be a spur to urge you to rise to an equal height through your own powers." Eugen heaved a sigh of resignation. "Confound it, Hermann, you take it for granted that I have an iron nature like yours, which never needs rest nor refreshment, which pushes forward unceasingly and takes everything by storm. I have a different constitution." "I know that!" said Hermann, with calm bitterness, "and believe me, Eugen, I have repented often enough, that I had any part in causing your life to take the direction it has. You ought to be free from the cares and limitations of ordinary life, ought to find the road to your future an open one, and it was with that view that I favoured your marriage. You are right, it was a fatal error to judge you by myself. You are one of those natures which need continual spurring forward; when the necessity for work was removed, the food for your talent was gone; had I left you to yourself, and you had had to work to live, it had been better!" "You speak," said Eugen, pettishly, "as if I had done nothing since I saw you last, and yet my portraits are valued and admired--"