"How?" said Mr. Bemperlein. "Why, Miss Sophie, that is exactly what I cannot tell you, much as I would like to tell you. Would you be friends with somebody, or rather would you not try in every way to avoid meeting somebody, who had mortally offended a third person whom you love and revere?" "Certainly," replied Sophie, "for then he would have offended myself. But are you quite sure that that is so? Have you heard both parties? As for myself, I am not so enchanted with Mr. Stein; or, to tell the truth, I dislike him the more the oftener I see him; but Franz, who is very clever, and a capital judge of men, is quite enthusiastic about him. How could that be if Stein were a bad man?" "I did not say he was bad," replied Bemperlein, working hard at a big lump of coal; "bad is a very relative idea, and what I call acting badly, Mr. Stein calls, perhaps, only acting thoughtlessly, in a cavalier manner, or some such name. But I call it acting badly, if a man----" Here Bemperlein interrupted himself, and poked more violently at the coal than ever. "How would you call it, for instance--I do not speak now of Mr. Stein--if a man were to promise marriage to a poor dependent girl, without parents, without friends, who has not a soul in this wide, wide world to protect her, who has believed his oaths and is willing to follow him, and who then finds herself sold and betrayed to a--Oh it is rascally, it is atrocious!" "But, for Heaven's sake, Oswald surely has not----" "I told you I am not speaking now of Mr. Stein. There are more cavaliers of the sort in this world, and they look as much one like the other as one viper looks like another viper." "My dear Bemperly, I pray you put the poker down; I can really stand it no longer. Take this cushion, if you must absolutely have something in your hand." "Thanks," said Bemperlein, putting down the poker, and seizing the cushion; and then, holding it like a baby in his arms, sinking into deep silence. Sophie began now in good earnest to be troubled about Bemperlein's excited condition. But what was her terror when Bemperlein suddenly jumped up, let the cushion in his arm fall on the ground, knelt down on it with both knees, seized one of her hands in his own, and bowing low before her, groaned in most piteous tones: "Oh! Miss Sophie, Miss Sophie!" "For Heaven's sake, Bemperly," exclaimed the young lady, "get up! If anybody saw you--saw us!" "Let me kneel," murmured Mr. Bemperlein. "I must tell you; and I cannot tell you if you look at me with your big eyes, or if you were to laugh----" Sophie at first did not know whether she should laugh or cry at this unexpected declaration of love. For Bemperlein's sake she could have cried; but for her own person, she could hardly help laughing aloud. "Bemperly," she said, "Bemperly, compose yourself; think of what you are saying, of what you are doing." "I know," murmured Bemperlein. "I have told myself so a hundred and a thousand times. At my age--"