In 1845 he was ready to return to Germany; but during his sojourn abroad the slow shadows of his love-crisis had been creeping on him. Two years of uninterrupted thought had brought an expansion of mind incalculable to one who lived in the intellectual. He was now grown up, conscious of power, and alas, Elise was not grown up. Now she called to him, unable to bear the separation longer; and thereby he was placed in the necessity of decision. No palterer with himself, he refused compromise. He was to choose between an absorber of and a compeer in his ideals. There is no need for harrowing psychology. He chose the latter; let those who blame him acknowledge at least his truth to himself. Let this be said--in later years when Elise had lost her second child, he invited her to his house and made her acquainted with his wife, at whose instance the invitation came. “You have not borne children!” she cried when he hesitated, and in those words she revealed the sympathy which made her so great an actress. Between these two women there grew up a warm friendship--a thing impossible if somewhere in all this there was not a noble element. Let us rather accept it in the spirit of _Aglavaine and Selysette_, than with the rigid sneer of Arnold at Shelley for proposing the same thing to Harriet. These were the words which Elise could afterwards write to Hebbel’s wife--“That our relations could take so pure a colour I ascribe to my sojourn there (Vienna). Though so many hours of bitterness were my lot in that unforgettable town, things would never have shaped themselves thus had I not learned to know you and all the facts on the spot itself. Our bond is now one of those of whose like there are few.”