“I don’t ask for impossibilities,” he said, guessing my thoughts. “You go and get your head wet,” he added, stroking my head like a child’s and again passing his hand over the wet hair; “you envy the leaves and the grass their wetting from the rain, and you would like yourself to be the grass and the leaves and the rain. But I am contented to enjoy them and everything else that is good and young and happy.”
“And do you regret nothing of the past?” I asked, while my heart grew heavier and heavier.
Again he thought for a time before replying. I saw that he wished to reply with perfect frankness.
“Nothing,” he said shortly.
“Not true! not true!” I said, turning towards him and looking into his eyes. “Do you really not regret the past?”
“No!” he repeated; “I am grateful for it, but I don’t regret it.”
“But would you not like to have it back?” I asked.
“No; I might as well wish to have wings. It is impossible.”
“And would you not alter the past? do you not reproach yourself or me?”
“No, never! It was all for the best.”
“Listen to me!” I said touching his arm to make him look round. “Why did you never tell me that you wished me to live as you really wished me to? Why did you give me a freedom for which I was unfit? Why did you stop teaching me? If you had wished it, if you had guided me differently, none of all this would have happened!” said I in a voice that increasingly expressed cold displeasure and reproach in place of the love of former days.