"Because I am a man, Bruno, and you know that I could and would help myself, without aid from others. But the love we feel for a woman partakes of the consciousness that we must protect her who cannot defend herself with our superior strength and courage, and that makes our love deeper, and fuller of sympathy. And then there is still another feeling mixed up with it, of which I can only tell you that it is pure as nature itself, but also as chaste, and which therefore must not be awakened before the right time, if it is not to become as fatal to rash man as the boldness of the youth, whom the thirst for knowledge drove to Saïs and to the temple where she dwelt, hid in close veils, Isis, the chaste, holy goddess of nature." "I do not quite understand you, Oswald." "The world and life are full of riddles, Bruno. Life is a Sphinx and we are [Oe]dipus. And it is the curse of [Oe]dipus that he must solve the enigma, although the solution makes him unhappy." "You are not angry with me, Oswald?" "I angry, darling! Why should _I_?" "Because I trouble you with such absurd questions." "You ought to ask me, Bruno; ask me about everything which causes you doubt or trouble. Your soul ought to lie open before me like a book, which I may peruse over and over again. Would to God I could write nothing but what is wise and good on its white pages." "You are always kind, so very kind towards me, Oswald, and I return only ingratitude and obstinacy!" "No, you do not do that--and then, are we not brothers? Brothers must love, and bear, and support each other, and have no right to keep their troubles apart. Bruno, if I could cherish the pious faith of many, that the spirits of the departed hover around the beloved ones whom they have left behind upon earth, I would say: From yonder, in the bright starry sky, our mothers are looking down upon us, and rejoice at our union and our love. Let us stand by each other in this wild strife of life, for defence and offence. It will not be long before you are a man like myself, and would to God a better man than I am. Then the last difference, the difference of years, which I do not feel even now, will have disappeared. It may be that then I will look up to you, as you now look up to me; then you will repay me a hundred-fold what I may be able to do for you now; then I shall be--oh, so willingly!--your debtor!" "Ah, that will never be!" said Bruno. "You will always be unattainably far ahead of me. I shall never be what you are even now."