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To neither of the lovers did Andreas give an immediate answer. He must think a little, he said. The self-esteem of the Herr Strauss was a trifle ruffled by the suggestion that in such a case waiting of any sort was necessary; it seemed to him that an offer so desirable as that which he had made was entitled to instant acceptance. But Ludwig noted a certain trembling in the voice that bade him wait, and was not so completely engrossed with his own hopes of happiness but that he could perceive its cause and could feel sorrow for it. All these years had Andreas cared for this sweet Roschen, and had cherished her as his dearest treasure; and now, when the best time of her life had come, he was asked to give her up to a love that rested its claim for recognition upon nothing more substantial than promises of care taking which the future might or might not make good. That Andreas, under such circumstances, even should consider his request, touched Ludwig’s good heart with gratitude; and the love that he had for a long while felt towards the old man led him now to pat an arm around his shoulder, as a son might have done, and to tell him that the home which he had ready for Roschen was ready for Roschen’s father too. And Lud wig’s voice also trembled a little. Andreas did not speak, but he put his thin hand into the big brown hand–much stained with the dark wax which shoemakers use and with long handling of leather–that Ludwig held out to him; and when they had stood together thus affectionately for a little time they parted, silently.

In truth, Andreas was more deeply moved than even Ludwig, for all his affectionate sympathy, had divined. His love for Roschen was a double love. With the love of a father he had watched over her these many years; yet even stronger had come to be his love for her as her mother born again. Sometimes, for whole days together, confusing the past with the present, he would call her Christine; and in his heart he ever gave greater room to the fancy that the life which he had hoped for was realized, and that the life which he was living was a dream. No wonder, then, that he asked for a little time in which to school himself to meet the fate that at a single blow brought destruction to his dear home on earth and to his dearer castle in the air.

Roschen was abroad that afternoon, and as Andreas, alone with his birds, turned over in his mind the answers which he must give to these young men–who sought to take to themselves, for the greater pleasure of their young lives, the single happiness which his old life had left to it–a great bitterness possessed his soul. When they had so much and he so little, it was cruel of them to seek to rob him thus, he thought. And their love, after all, was but the growth of a day, while his love had been growing steadily for forty years. Roschen was to him at once the sweetheart of his youth and the dear daughter of his age. How could these young fellows have the effrontery to place their own light love fancies in rivalry with this profound love of his that was rooted in all the years of a lifetime? His thoughts went back to those long-past days when he and Christine first had known each other as little children on the sunny slopes of the Andreas-berg, and when began the love that still was a living reality. And then he followed downward through the years his own love-story from this its beginning–the promise made in the twilight, while the south wind, laden with the sweet smell of the pine-trees of the Schwarzwald, played about them; the hard parting; his joyous journey with his birds westward across the sea; the black day when that journey ended; the years of sorrow which closed in still keener sorrow when his Christine was lost to him utterly in death; and then through the later years, which ever grew brighter and happier as his love for Christine was born anew and lived its strange, half-real life in his love for Christine’s child, who also was the daughter given him by Heaven to cheer and comfort him in his old age. And now at the end of it all he was asked to give to another this sweet flower of love that for his happiness, almost by a miracle, as it seemed, a second time had bloomed. Was not this asking more of him, he thought, than rightly should be asked?