"It's all right," he said to Balder. "The tragi-comedy is to have an after piece. What do you say to that, child? We'll recommend the subject to Mohr for a fantastic story, the title will be promising: 'The Ghost in Rosenstrasse.'" "All will yet be well," replied Balder gently, repressing a sigh. "Such a parting was unnatural, and who knows whether you both would not have suffered too severely in the trial. Now no harm is done except that she too must have suffered in having been deprived of you a week." "Oh! you flatterer!" exclaimed Edwin, who was pacing up and down the room with his hands in his pockets. "Deprived of me? And what compelled hex to be deprived of me, except her own free ducal will? Oh! child, child, don't let us call X, U to each other! The matter stands simply thus: I knew nothing of her, and she neither wished nor wishes to know anything of me. And now see, my dear child, what a pitiful weakling man, and especially your wise brother is! Instead of being satisfied that this fortnight's silence is meant as a discharge, he will not be content to rest until he has received his dismissal in due form, if in any way he can obtain another audience. "You see," he continued, while Balder was silently trying to calm his fears at this new turn in the state of affairs, "we have our boasted free will and the admirable categorical imperative mood, the standard specifics for all attacks of moral fevers. I can solemnly assure you, Balder, I'm no coward, no such pitiful weakling, that I would not swallow the bitterest medicine, if I knew it would cure me. 'You can, because you ought!' Certainly, I can force myself not to steal, murder, commit adultery, or break any other of the ten commandments, because I know they are in themselves half holy, half salutary, and the world would be out of joint if we did not hold in check certain desires for our neighbor's purse, life, wife, or anything else that is his. But _here_, in my case--what do you command, Herr Imperative Mood? What do you desire, Herr Free Will? That it looks ill for _meum esse conservare_, if I simply baffle this longing and stay away, I have sufficiently experienced during the last fortnight. Whether matters will be worse if I see her again, who can tell? So I think I'll go there and ask her whether she thinks me a fool or a man over wise, for again playing with heat and cold which have given me chilblains already?" "Fortunately we're rich young men again," he added smiling. "For although she esteems me very highly because I visit her without gloves, it might seem quite too magnificent if I should call in a straw hat at the end of October. I will spend something on myself, child, and even look around for a respectable winter overcoat. My old one has gone Heaven knows where with Franzelius, who wore it for a Sunday coat."