"You are evading my question," Leo responded; "that being so, I will forthwith devote myself exclusively to this young chicken, but not to the cucumber which accompanies it." So saying he began to eat, apparently with a ravenous appetite. Ulrich watched him for a few minutes in silence. Then he said, "You are right, after all. It is not worth while to try and pass off as a joke what is of vital gravity. That is an outrage on one's inner self.... You ask me if I am happy. Look at me, and say if it is possible for me to be happy? You know that I have always been ænemic and weakly. Only by the most vigilant and rigorous training of my will-power have I been able to develop myself into an even partially useful human being, and by the expenditure of energy in contending with pitiful hindrances, which another, a healthy man, knows nothing about, or, if he does, thinks nothing of. I have had to sacrifice so much sense of personal enjoyment at the same time, that any real happiness where I am concerned is not to be thought of for a moment. Yet I ventured to offer my hand to Felicitas. I, an invalid, a student, and a hermit, with nothing to recommend me except my estate and my honourable intentions, to Felicitas, a creature so soft, and made for pleasure, so irresistibly open to every impression of the imagination and every sensuous charm, who repays the world in such full measure for what she receives from it. Surely it were a crime if I tried to interest her in my quiet abstract speculations. In allowing her every imaginable freedom, I purchase the right to live near her as her husband. She is fond of men's society ... very well.... I acquiesce calmly in all the youth of the neighbourhood flocking to pay her court, and to hear her confess to me in her sweet, shamefaced way what fools men make of themselves for her sake affords me a sort of secret satisfaction. I give her whims _carte-blanche_, whether she builds artistic ruins in the park, or gallops over the meadows by night, or swims in the river in the moonlight, or when the sun is shining shuts the shutters and lies in bed by lamplight till evening, it is all the same to me. She may do exactly as she likes, and the breath of gossip dare not touch her, for she is my wife. I regard her as some beautiful exotic, which has been committed to my care, the strange loveliness of which must be worshipped unconditionally, even if its nature and the laws of its growth are not understood; but how absurd to chatter on about her thus! You know her." "Yes, I know her," Leo made answer, grimly. Something in his tone excited Ulrich's suspicion. "Do you mean to imply that you don't agree with me?" "I--I imply nothing." "Please, I would much rather you spoke out."