These were curiously mixed feelings which were roused within him by his recognition of the new position he so suddenly found himself in. He said to himself that the things which caused anxiety and terror to his adversaries were for himself objects of joy and triumph, and constituted the clearest proof that he had not only dreamed a dream of rapturous delight. And to be sure, his love could not for ever remain in the far-off regions of starry splendour; it was bound some time to approach this earth, to become visible to the dull, mole-like eyes of these men. But then again, putting himself in the place of these others, and examining himself and his love, as these others were undoubtedly doing, he would hear anew, and this time from the lips of unjust accusers, the old evil questions which he thought had long ago been done with, to wit--Is your longing and your desire really and truly free from every vestige of selfishness, from every frivolous admixture? Has the satisfaction of your own vanity, inasmuch as you may prove that you, a man of fifty, are able to win the love of such a youthful, and, in every respect, such a highly-favoured and gifted girl, against the wishes of her own parents, before her who had once spurned your love, in the presence and to the shame and discomfiture of so much more likely a rival--have these considerations nothing, nothing whatever to do with your love? And supposing he were to allow himself to be urged by pressure on the part of his foes to make a declaration before the right time; or supposing there never had been and never would be such a time at all--supposing he and all of them had blundered;--supposing Erna's heart knew nought of love, and rejected his love, amazed, terrified, insulted--what then? Ye Heavens above! what then? Where was then that line of retreat which Göthe had so wisely secured for his hero? He realised it to be one of those horribly hideous contradictions of human life that, while before his inner eye the possibilities of his future fate concentrated themselves as in a focus, he was busied before the mirror in exchanging the cravat which Konski had put out for him for the early dinner, for another (the first dressing-bell having just rung), in reference to which Erna had once said that it suited him particularly well. He stepped, annoyed, from the mirror to the open window. There came floating through the balmy, sunny air a gossamer thread and fixed itself on his shoulder. He sighed wearily, he felt unutterably sad.