I

So this is the Einfried Sanatorium! White and rectilinear, with its expanse of main buildings and side wings, it lies in the centre of a broad park that is delightfully fitted out with grottoes, arbours, and pavilions made of bark. And above and beyond the slate roofs, the hills rise bulkily against the sky. They are green with pines, and gently irregular.

This institution is still run by Dr. Leander. With his black, double-pointed beard, which is as coarse and matted as the horsehair used for stuffing furniture, with his thick, glistening spectacles and his air of having been chilled by science, hardened, and filled with a subdued, cautious pessimism⁠—with all this he maintains a forceful and conclusive jurisdiction over his patients. His patients⁠—items that were too weak to make laws for themselves and keep them, but had given themselves completely over to him that they might gain support from his rigidity.

As to Fräulein von Osterloh⁠—she functions with an unwearying devotion as housekeeper. Great heavens! how urgently she keeps on rushing upstairs and downstairs, from one end of the institute to the other! She has charge of the kitchen and the storeroom, goes through the wash, gives orders to the servants, and sets the table of the establishment from the standpoints of economy, health, tastiness, and of the outward appearance of things. She manages with an agitated meticulousness; and in her excessive industry there lies concealed a steady reproach for the whole world of men, since it has not yet occurred to anyone of them to take her with him. But in two round crimson spots, the unextinguishable hope glows on her cheeks of ultimately becoming the wife of Dr. Leander.⁠ ⁠…

Ozone, and quiet, quiet air⁠ ⁠… in spite of anything Dr. Leander’s detractors and rivals may say to the contrary, Einfried is to be most warmly recommended for consumptives. But there are not only tubercular patients here; there are all sorts of inmates, men, women, and even children. Dr. Leander has results to offer in any number of fields. There are people here with stomach-trouble, as, for instance, the wife of Magistrate Spatz, who in addition has something wrong with her ears. There are gentlemen with bad hearts, paralytics, sufferers from rheumatism and all stages of nervous disorder. One diabetic general is consuming his pension here with a ceaseless grumbling. Several men with fleshless faces jerk their legs about in an uncontrolled manner which by no means augurs well. One woman of fifty, the wife of a Pastor Höhlenrauch, has brought nineteen children into the world and is completely out of her head; still, she has no peace, but has been wandering miserably and aimlessly through the whole house for a year now, resting silent and staring on the arm of her private nurse, and driven by vague unrest.

There is an occasional death among the “serious cases,” who lie in their rooms and do not make their appearance either at mealtimes or in the drawing-room⁠ ⁠… and no one, not even the occupant of the adjoining room, is aware of it. The waxen guest is removed in the dead of night, and the activities of Einfried continue undisturbed: the rubdowns, the electric treatments, the injections, the showers, baths, exercises, sweating, deep breathing, all in different places and with the most up-to-date equipment.

Yes, everything is full of life, even here. The institute is in bloom. At the entrance to the side wing, the porter sounds the large bell when new guests arrive. Dr. Leander, together with Fräulein von Osterloh, accompanies in all formality to their cabs those who are leaving. Just what kind of creature has not put up at Einfried! There is even an author here, an eccentric man, who bears the name of some mineral or jewel, and is stealing days from the Lord God.⁠ ⁠…

Furthermore, besides Dr. Leander, there is a second physician, for the minor cases and the hopeless ones. But his name is Müller, and he is really not worth mentioning.

II

In the beginning of January the wholesale merchant Klöterjahn⁠—of the firm A. C. Klöterjahn & Co.⁠—brought his wife to Einfried; and Fräulein von Osterloh received them after their long journey in the reception-room on the ground floor, which was fitted out in a marvellously pure Empire style like nearly all of the distinctive old house. Almost immediately Dr. Leander also appeared; he bowed, and a conversation was begun, in the course of which both parties came to an understanding.

Outside, out in the winter, was the park with its covered flowerbeds, its snowed-up grottoes, and lonely little temples. And two servants were bringing in the trunks of the new guest from the cab which stood in the street in front of the big iron door⁠—since there was no approach up to the house.

“Slowly, Gabriele, take care, my angel, and keep your mouth closed,” Herr Klöterjahn had said as he helped his wife through the park; and whoever saw them could not help being deeply moved by this take care⁠—which was spoken in English⁠—even though it cannot be denied that Herr Klöterjahn might have said it in plain, simple German.

The driver who had brought them from the station to the sanatorium, a crude, ignorant man without any of the finer feelings, had bitten his tongue in powerless caution while the wholesale merchant was helping his wife to descend; yes, it even seemed as though these two sturdy bays, shivering in the silent cold and with their eyes rolled back, were following the anxious procedure with suspense, full of misgiving for so much frail gracefulness and such tender charm.

The young woman was suffering with her trachea, as it had been expressly stated in the first letter which Herr Klöterjahn had sent to the head physician of Einfried from the shore of the Baltic⁠—and, thank God, it was not her lungs! But even if it had been her lungs, this new patient could not have had a sweeter or a nobler look, could not have appeared more removed or incorporeal, than now. Close by her robust husband, she followed the conversation, lying back faint and weary in the white lacquered armchair, with its strong straight lines.

Her lovely pale hands, entirely bare except for a slender wedding-ring, were lying in her lap, in the folds of a dark heavy woollen coat. And she wore a tight-fitting silver-grey shirtwaist, with a close high collar covered with velvet embroidery. But these warm, heavy stuffs only made the unutterable weariness of her little head seem all the more appealing. Her light brown hair was gathered low in the back; it was combed smooth; and only near the right temple one stray curling strand fell across her forehead, not far from the place over her distinctly traced eyebrow where a peculiar tiny vein, pale blue and sickly, branched across the clearness and purity of an almost transparent forehead. This little blue vein over the one eye commanded in a disturbing fashion the whole fine oval of her face. It protruded more noticeably as soon as the woman began to speak, and gave an effect of exertion to her face, or even of distress, awakening uncertain apprehensions. Nevertheless, she spoke, and smiled. She spoke easily and amiably in a lightly veiled voice, and she smiled with her somewhat listless eyes. Yes, now and then they showed the least inclination to bulge, and the corners, on either side of the narrow bridge of her nose, lay in a deep shadow. Her beautiful wide mouth was pale, and yet it seemed brilliant, owing to the fact, perhaps, that her lips were demarcated with such exceptional sharpness and clarity. She would cough occasionally. At such times she put her handkerchief to her lips and examined it afterwards.

“Don’t cough, Gabriele,” Herr Klöterjahn said. “You know how Dr. Hinzpeter back home warned you especially against it, darling, and all you have to do is just hold back, my angel. As I said,” he repeated, “it is the trachea. When it began, I really thought it was the lungs, and God knows I was frightened. But it wasn’t the lungs, nah, not on your life; we don’t fall for anything like that, eh, Gabriele? He, he!”

“Beyond a doubt,” Dr. Leander said, and glistened on them with his glasses.

Whereupon Herr Klöterjahn requested coffee, coffee and rolls⁠—and he had such a vivid way of pronouncing it half swallowed, that you couldn’t help feeling an appetite.

He got what he wanted, got also rooms for himself and his wife, and they installed themselves.

Furthermore, Dr. Leander took over the case himself, without consulting Dr. Müller.

III

The new patient created an unusual stir in Einfried, and Herr Klöterjahn, who was accustomed to such successes, accepted with satisfaction every respect that was paid her. The diabetic general stopped grumbling for a moment the first time he saw her; the gentlemen with the fleshless faces smiled, and attempted desperately to control their legs when they were near her; and the Magistratsrätin Spatz immediately attached herself as an elder friend. Indeed, she made quite an impression, this woman who bore Herr Klöterjahn’s name! An author who had been spending his time in Einfried for some weeks now, a distant sort⁠—his name sounded like the name of some jewel⁠—coloured noticeably as she passed him in the corridor; he stood still as though rooted there, even after she had disappeared.

Within two days everyone in the sanatorium knew her history. She was born in Bremen, a fact, moreover, which was plainly noticeable in certain winning quirks to her pronunciation. Two years before, she had given the wholesale merchant Klöterjahn her consent for life. She went with him to his home town, along the Baltic, and about ten months ago, under the most unusually difficult and dangerous circumstances, she had presented him with a child, a marvellously vigorous and well setup son and heir. But since those dreadful days she had never regained her strength, if it could be said that she ever did have much strength. Exceptionally exhausted and exceptionally impoverished of all physical resistance, she had scarcely left her bed when she developed a cough which brought up a little blood. Oh, not much⁠—an insignificant little speck of blood; but it would have been much preferable if it had not happened at all, while the disquieting thing was that after a short time the same slight but troublesome incident was repeated. Now, there were remedies for all this, and Dr. Hinzpeter, the family physician, made use of them. A complete rest was prescribed, there was cracked ice to be swallowed, morphine was brought to bear against the tickling sensation which made her cough, and the heart was steadied as far as possible. But recovery refused to set in, and the young mother seemed to be consuming in a mild and silent glow while Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., a masterpiece of a baby, asserted and maintained his station in life with a frightful emphasis and lack of consideration.⁠ ⁠… As has been said before, it was the trachea, a word which, in Dr. Hinzpeter’s mouth, exercised an astonishingly consoling, reassuring, and almost hilarious effect on everyone. But although it was not the lungs, the doctor had eventually thought it highly advisable, in accelerating her convalescence, to try the influence of a milder climate and of a few months in some regular institute. The reputation of Einfried and its director had done the rest.

That was the way things stood; and Herr Klöterjahn in person told it to everyone who manifested the least interest. He spoke in a loud boisterous manner, and with the good humour of a man whose digestion is in as perfect order as his purse⁠—with vastly explosive movements of his lips, in the broad, yet rapid fashion of people along the north coast. Many of his words were hurled out, so that each sound came like a discharge; and he would laugh about it as an excellent joke.

He was of medium height, broad, strong, and short-legged, and possessed a full red face with water-blue eyes shaded by light blond lashes, large nostrils and moist lips. He had English side-whiskers, wore English clothing, and was enchanted to find at Einfried an English family, father, mother, and three pretty children with their nurse, who were stopping here for the simple reason that they did not know where else to stop; he ate an English breakfast with them every morning. He was especially fond of his food and drink, displayed himself as a true connoisseur of both the cuisine and the wine cellar, and entertained the company most rousingly with accounts of the dinners which were given back home among his own circle, and with descriptions of certain choice dishes which were unknown here. At such times his eyes would squint with a kindly expression and his speech contained some palatal and nasal element, to an accompaniment of soft smacking noises deep in his gullet. As evidence that he was not fundamentally inimical to other earthly enjoyments, there was the evening when a patient at Einfried, an author by profession, came upon him in one of the corridors joking with a chambermaid in a somewhat inappropriate manner⁠—a trifling bit of sport which caused the author concerned to show a most ridiculous expression of disgust.

As to Herr Klöterjahn’s wife, it was more than plain that she was attached to him with all her heart. She followed his words and motions with a smile; not with the complacent forbearance which most sufferers display towards the healthy, but with that lovable pleasure and sympathy which in rare instances good-natured invalids feel towards the confident manifestations of vitality by people who are perfectly at home in their skins.

Herr Klöterjahn did not stay long at Einfried. He had brought his wife here; but now that a week had passed, and he knew her to be comfortable and in good hands, he could stay no longer. Duties of equal importance, his thriving child, and his equally thriving business, called him back home. They compelled him to leave, with his wife entrusted to the best of care.

IV

Spinell was the name of the author who had been staying in Einfried for some weeks; Detlev Spinell was his name, and his exterior was remarkable.

Imagine a dark-haired man in his early thirties, quite tall, his hair already noticeably grey about the temples, and with a round, pale, somewhat puffy face which showed not the least trace of a beard. It was not shaved⁠—one could tell; but it was soft and childlike, with a faint down showing here and there. This gave him a quite noteworthy appearance. His eyes had a soft expression about them, were somewhat staring, and of the colour of a deer. His nose was small, but a wee bit fleshy. In addition, Herr Spinell possessed the arched porous upper lip of a Roman, carious teeth, and feet of unusual length. One of the gentlemen with the uncontrollable legs, who was a bit of a cynic and a wit, had dubbed him behind his back “the decrepit baby.” But that was nasty, and not at all to the point. He wore good fashionable clothes, went about in a long black coat and a vest with coloured dots.

He was unsociable, and found nothing in common with a single soul there. It was only once in a great while that an engaging, amiable, and overflowing mood came upon him; and this always happened when Herr Spinell was under some aesthetic urgency, when the sight of something beautiful or other, the composition of two colours, a nobly formed vase, or the mountains in the sunset, surprised him into open admiration. “How beautiful!” he would say at such times, laying his head to one side and raising his shoulders while he opened his hands and twisted his nose and lips. “God, just look, how beautiful!” And under the emotion of such a moment he was capable of throwing his arms blindly about the neck of the most distinguished person, whether man or woman.

There always lay on his table, visible to anyone who entered his room, the book which he had written. It was a moderate-sized novel, provided with a thoroughly amazing cover and printed on a sort of filter paper for coffee. As to the type, each letter looked like a Gothic cathedral. Fräulein von Osterloh had read it in an idle hour, and found it “refined,” which was her way of passing judgment of “godlessly boring.” Everything happened in worldly salons, in luxurious boudoirs, full of grotesques, antique furniture, expensive porcelains, invaluable fabrics, and artistic ornaments of all sorts. The most loving emphasis was laid upon the descriptions of such things; and through it you could always see Herr Spinell, with his nose twisted, saying: “How beautiful!”⁠ ⁠… Furthermore, it could not help seeming queer that he had written no other books besides this one, since he still seemed to be writing with passion. He spent the major portion of the day in his room writing, and mailed an extraordinary number of letters, almost always one or two daily. Although it was very strange and amusing how seldom he received a letter in return.⁠ ⁠…

V

Herr Spinell sat opposite Herr Klöterjahn’s wife at the table. The first meal they all ate together, he appeared a bit late in the large dining-hall on the ground floor of the side wing, spoke in a weak voice to everyone in general, and took his place⁠—whereupon Dr. Leander introduced him to the newcomers without much ceremony. He bowed, and then began eating in a visibly embarrassed manner, manipulating his knife and fork somewhat affectedly in large, white, beautifully formed hands which came out of two narrow sleeves. Gradually he came to feel more at ease, and cast calm sidelong glances at Herr Klöterjahn and his wife. Also, in the course of the meal, Herr Klöterjahn offered a few questions and remarks about the situation and climate of Einfried; his wife dropped in a word here and there in her catching way, and Herr Spinell answered politely. His voice was soft and quite pleasant; but he had a somewhat impeded and sipping manner of talking, as though his teeth were in the way of his tongue.

After dinner, when everyone had gone into the drawing-room, and Dr. Leander came to pay his compliments to the new guests in particular, Herr Klöterjahn’s wife inquired about the person who had sat opposite them.

“What is the gentleman’s name?” she asked. “Spinelli? I did not catch the name.”

“Spinell, not Spinelli, Madam. No, he is not an Italian, but was merely born in Lemberg, so far as I know⁠ ⁠…”

“And did you say he was a writer? Or just what?” Herr Klöterjahn asked. He had his hands deep in the pockets of his comfortable English trousers, leaned one ear to the doctor, and, as is the case with a good many people, opened his mouth to listen.

“Indeed, I don’t just know⁠ ⁠… he writes⁠ ⁠…” Dr. Leander answered. “He has, I believe, published a book, a kind of novel, but I really don’t know anything⁠ ⁠…”

This repeated “don’t know” indicated that Dr. Leander didn’t take much stock in the writer, and declined all responsibility for him.

“But that is certainly very interesting!” Herr Klöterjahn’s wife put in. She had never before seen an author face to face.

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Leander answered accommodatingly. “He is supposed to have a certain amount of reputation⁠ ⁠…” Whereupon nothing more was said about the author.

But a little later, after the new guests had retired and Dr. Leander was about to leave the drawing-room, Herr Spinell intercepted him and made inquiries on his part also.

“What is the name of these two?” he asked. “Of course, I didn’t quite catch it.”

“Klöterjahn,” Dr. Leander answered, and went on his way.

“What is the man’s name?”

“Their name is Klöterjahn!” and Dr. Leander was gone. He took no stock at all in this author.

VI

Had we not reached the place where Herr Klöterjahn had gone back home? Indeed, he was again on the Baltic, with his business and his child, this inconsiderate and lively little creature which had cost his mother so many pains and a slight defect in the trachea. But as for her, the young wife, she stayed on at Einfried, and the Magistratsrätin Spatz attached herself to her as an elder friend. But that did not keep Herr Klöterjahn’s wife from mixing agreeably with the other patients. As, for instance, with Herr Spinell, who, to the astonishment of all⁠—for up to now he had had nothing in common with a single soul there⁠—had showed towards her from the very start an extraordinary amount of consideration and devotion, and with whom she enjoyed chatting in the free hours left her by a strenuous schedule.

He approached her with an immeasurable amount of caution and reverence, and would only speak to her in a carefully suppressed voice, so that the Rätin Spatz who had trouble with her ears, could scarcely understand a word he said. He would tiptoe with his large feet up to the chair where Herr Klöterjahn’s wife was leaning back frail and smiling. Then he would stop about two steps off, keep one leg behind the other, bend the upper part of his body, and talk in his impeded, somewhat sipping manner. He was quite urgent, but ready at any moment to retreat and disappear in haste as soon as the least sign of weariness or satiety might be noticeable on her face. But he did not weary her. She would press him to be seated near the Rätin and herself; then she would ask him some question or other, and listen to him smiling and engrossed. For quite frequently he would drop into a delightful and unusual vein, such as she had never met with before.

“Just why are you at Einfried?” she asked. “What sort of cure are you taking, Herr Spinell?”

“Cure?⁠ ⁠… I take a bit of the electric treatment. But not to speak of. I will tell you frankly why I am here.⁠ ⁠… On account of the period.”

“Ah!” said Herr Klöterjahn’s wife, supporting her chin in her hand and turning towards him with the exaggerated eagerness one puts on for children who are about to tell something.

“Oh, yes. Einfried is entirely Empire; it used to be a castle, a summer home, I am told. This side wing is a recent annex, but the main building is old and genuine. Now there are times when I simply can’t live without Empire, when it is inevitably necessary to my well-being. It is plain that you must feel one way when among furniture which is soft and comfortable even to the extent of the lascivious, and feel another way among such tables, chairs, and drapes as these, with their marked straight lines. This brightness and strength, this cold crass simplicity and its reserve of vigour, lends me bearing and dignity, if you will; it produces an inner purging and renovation, and without a doubt it is uplifting.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, that is remarkable,” she said. “And I can understand you, with a little effort.”

Then he answered that it was not worth the effort, so that they both laughed together. The Rätin Spatz laughed too, and found it remarkable; but she didn’t claim to understand him.

The drawing-room was large and attractive. The high white folding doors of the billiard-room stood wide open; here the gentlemen with the uncontrollable legs and several others were amusing themselves. To the other side, a glass door afforded a prospect of the broad terrace and garden. In one corner there was a piano. There was also a card table at hand, covered with green felt. Here and there a woman was reading or doing fancy work. The heating was provided by an iron stove, although it was pleasant to sit and talk in front of the unused fireplace, with its imitation coal and flames made of painted paper. “You are an early riser, Herr Spinell,” said Herr Klöterjahn’s wife. “Two or three times I have happened to see you leaving the house around half past seven in the morning.”

“An early riser? But with reservations, to be sure. The fact is that I get up early because I am really a sleepyhead.”

“But you must explain that, Herr Spinell!” The Rätin Spatz also wanted to have it explained.

“Well⁠ ⁠… if you are an early riser, it doesn’t seem necessary to me that you should get up that early. But our conscience⁠ ⁠… it is an awful problem, this conscience! I and those of my ilk spend all their time in a struggle with their own lives, and they are kept more than busy trying to deceive life here and there and to procure for it a sly little bit of self-complacency. We are useless creatures, I and those of my ilk, and with the exception of a good hour now and then we are burdened to death with the knowledge of our uselessness. We detest the useful, we know that it is common and unlovely, and we defend this truth the way one defends only a truth which is inevitably necessary to him. And yet we are so gnawed at by a bad conscience that there isn’t a healthy spot left on us. Add to this the fact that the very nature of our inner existence, our attitude towards life, our method of work, has a horribly unwholesome, undermining, and irritable effect on us, which makes the case that much the worse. But there are slight palliatives, without which it would all be unbearable. A certain selectness and hygienic rigour in the manner of our living, for instance, is needed with many of us. To rise early, uncannily early, a cold bath and a walk through the snow⁠ ⁠… perhaps that will make us contented with ourselves for a whole hour. Believe me, if I did as I wanted, I should lie in bed until afternoon. So you see, my early rising is pure hypocrisy.”

“Why, no, Herr Spinell! I should call it self-mastery.⁠ ⁠… Shouldn’t you, Frau Rätin?” And, sure enough, the Rätin Spatz also called it self-mastery.

“Hypocrisy or self-mastery! It is a choice between one word and the other. But I happen to be so broodingly honest that I⁠ ⁠…”

“That is just it: you brood too much.”

“Yes, I brood too much.”

The good weather continued. The hills, the house and park, the entire locality, lay out in a flat pure white with blinding brilliance and bluish shadows. There was no wind, and the air was only moderately chilly. A delicate blue sky curved spotless above the entire scene, with myriads of tiny flaming torches, a dance of glistening crystals. At this time Herr Klöterjahn’s wife was doing reasonably well. She had no fever, her cough was almost entirely gone, and she ate without forcing herself to it. According to her instructions, she would often sit out for hours at a time on the sunny terrace. She would sit in the snow, all bundled up in covers and furs, and breathe in unquestioningly the pure iron air, which was to improve her trachea. Then at times she would notice Herr Spinell going about the park. He would be just as warmly clad, and in fur shoes which gave his feet a fantastic size. He walked through the snow with a tentative step and a certain careful, stiffly gracile position to his arms, and, when he reached the terrace, would greet her politely and climb the steps below her to begin a conversation.

“Today, on my morning walk, I saw a beautiful woman⁠ ⁠… God, she was beautiful!” And he laid his head to one side, and opened his hands.

“Indeed, Herr Spinell? But you must describe her to me!”

“No, that is impossible. For I should give you an unjust picture of her. I caught the woman in passing, with just half a glance; I didn’t really see her. But the effaced shadow of her that I received was enough to start me going and to let me carry away a picture that is beautiful⁠ ⁠… God, it is beautiful!”

She laughed. “Is that your way of observing beautiful women, Herr Spinell?”

“Yes, and it is a better way than if I stared like some crude reality-monger into their faces and carried away the impression of a miserable collection of facts⁠ ⁠…”

“Reality-monger⁠ ⁠… That is a queer word! A genuine author’s word, Herr Spinell! But it appeals to me, if I may say so. There is so much in it which I understand somewhat, something free and independent which is a challenge to our servitude to the actual⁠ ⁠… although it is nevertheless the most respectable thing imaginable, the very soul of respectability.⁠ ⁠… And then, I understand that there is something beyond the tangible, something more tender⁠ ⁠…”

“I know of only one face,” he began suddenly, with an unusually happy note in his voice, raising his clenched hands to his shoulders and letting an exalted smile expose his large teeth; “I know of only one face where it would be a crime for me to think of correcting the noble reality with imagination⁠ ⁠… one face which I should be content to gaze at, to dwell upon, not minutes, not hours, but my entire life⁠ ⁠… to lose myself in it, and be made to forget everything of this earth⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, yes, Herr Spinell! The only thing is that Fräulein von Osterloh has somewhat disagreeable ears.”

He said nothing, bowing deeply. As he stood erect again, his eyes rested with an expression of embarrassment and anguish on the peculiar little vein which branched pale blue and sickly across the clarity of her almost transparent forehead.

VII

Really, a quite remarkable sort! Herr Klöterjahn’s wife would think about him now and then, since she had a good deal of time for thinking. Whether it was that the change of air was beginning to lose its effect, or that some actually harmful influence was asserting itself, the condition of her trachea would certainly have been better; she became weak, tired, without much appetite, and occasionally had a fever. Dr. Leander was most emphatic in insisting that she remain quiet, take plenty of rest, and be very careful of herself. So that when she did not have to be lying down, she would sit quietly near the Rätin Spatz, with some needlework forgotten in her lap, and thinking of something or other.

Yes, he had set her to thinking⁠ ⁠… this strange Herr Spinell. But the remarkable thing was that she didn’t think so much of him as of herself. Somehow or other, he had created in her an unusual curiosity, an interest she had never felt before, in her own person.

One day, in the course of a conversation, he had said: “No, they are puzzling things, women are. Old as the question is, you can’t help considering it in astonishment. Some wonderful creature, a nymph, a vision, a being out of some fairy dream. And what does she do? Goes off and surrenders herself to some champion at a county fair, or some butcher’s boy. She comes along on his arm, perhaps even leans her head against his shoulder, and looks about her with a sly smile, as if to say: ‘Now then, you can go break your hearts about it!’ And we do go and break our hearts.”

While he was saying this, Herr Klöterjahn’s wife had been very occupied.

Another day, to the great astonishment of the Rätin Spatz, the following dialogue took place between them:

“I wonder if I might dare to ask you⁠—although it is very impertinent⁠—what your name is, your true name?”

“Why, my name is Klöterjahn, Herr Spinell!”

“Hm. I knew that. Or rather, I challenge it. For, of course, I mean your real name, your maiden-name. You will be fair enough to grant me, I hope, that anyone who would address you as ‘Frau Klöterjahn’ would deserve to be thrashed.”

She laughed so heartily that the tiny blue vein over her eyebrow stood out with painful clarity, and gave her sweet, tender face an expression of effort and fatigue which was deeply disquieting.

“No! Surely not, Herr Spinell. To be thrashed? Does ‘Klöterjahn’ seem so awful to you?”

“Yes, I have hated this name from the bottom of my heart from the moment I first heard it. It is farcical, and frightfully homely; and it would be cruel and abject if one were to carry the accepted usage so far as to apply your husband’s name to you.”

“Well, and ‘Eckhof’? Is ‘Eckhof’ better? My father’s name is ‘Eckhof.’ ”

“Ah, just see! ‘Eckhof’ is something quite different. ‘Eckhof’ is even the name of a great actor. ‘Eckhof’ is proper.⁠ ⁠… You mention only your father. Your mother, then, could she⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, my mother died when I was still quite young.”

“Ah. But tell me more about yourself, may I ask? But not if it tires you. If it tires you, you must rest, and I will go on telling you about Paris. But you could speak softly, yes, even if you whisper⁠ ⁠… that would only make everything the lovelier.⁠ ⁠… You were born in Bremen?” He put this question almost inaudibly, with an expression of worship and significance, as though there were no other city in the world like Bremen; as though Bremen were a city full of unmentionable adventures and speechless beauties, and to be born there gave one a vague majesty.

“Yes, just think!” she said involuntarily. “I come from Bremen.”

“I was there once,” he remarked thoughtfully.

“Great heavens, you were there, too! Herr Spinell, I believe you have seen everything from Tunis to Spitzbergen!”

“Yes, I was there once,” he repeated. “A few short hours in the evening. I remember an old, narrow street, with a strange moon lying straight above the roofs of the houses. Then I was in a Rathskeller that smelt of wine and must. It is an insistent memory⁠ ⁠…”

“Indeed? Just where could that have been?⁠ ⁠… Yes, I was born in just such a one of those dark, gabled houses⁠ ⁠… in the home of one of the old merchant families, with its reverberating halls and white lacquered portico.”

“Then your father is a merchant?” he asked a bit falteringly.

“Yes. But besides that, and first of all, he is an artist.”

“Ah! Ah! And to what extent?”

“He plays the violin. But that does not mean much. It is the way he plays it, Herr Spinell, that is important! I have never been able to hear certain notes without feeling the tears burn marvellously in my eyes⁠ ⁠… it is something that I experience in no other way. But you do not believe⁠ ⁠…”

“I do believe! Ah, as if I could doubt! But tell me: your family is quite old? Many generations have already lived, worked, and died in that dark, gabled house?”

“Yes. But why do you ask that?”

“Because it often happens that a race with dry, practical bourgeois traditions finds itself again toward the end of its days in art.”

“Is that the case?⁠ ⁠… Yes, as to my father, he is certainly more of an artist than many a man who calls himself an artist and lives on his reputation as an artist. I just play the piano a bit. Now I am not permitted to play, but then, at home, I used to play. My father and I⁠ ⁠… we played together. Yes, all those years are dear to me. Especially the garden, our garden, to the rear of the house. It was wretchedly grown up in weeds, and surrounded by mossy, crumbling walls; but that was what gave it its charm. There was a spring in the middle, with a thick wreath of irises about it. In the summer I used to spend long hours there with my girl friends. We all sat around the spring on little campstools⁠ ⁠…”

“How beautiful!” Herr Spinell said, raising his shoulders. “Would you sit there and sing?”

“No, we sewed.”

“Always⁠ ⁠… always that⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, we sewed and chatted, my six girl friends and I⁠ ⁠…”

“How beautiful! God, just listen, how beautiful!” exclaimed Herr Spinell, and his face was distorted with his enthusiasm.

“What do you find so especially beautiful in that, Herr Spinell?”

“Only this: that there were six beside you, that you were not included in this number, but stood out from the rest like a queen. You were distinguished from your six friends. A little golden crown, quite faint, but significant, shone in your hair⁠ ⁠…”

“No, nonsense, no sort of crown⁠ ⁠…”

“Still, it was shining secretly. I should have seen it, should have seen it plainly in your hair, if I had been hidden in the bushes at one of those times⁠ ⁠…”

“God only knows what you might have seen. But you weren’t hidden there, although one day it was my present husband who stepped out of the bushes accompanied by my father. I am afraid they had overheard a good deal too much of our chatter⁠ ⁠…”

“Then that was the place you first met your husband?”

“Yes, I met him there for the first time!” she said loudly and cheerfully; and as she smiled, the tiny, pale-blue vein stood out, strained and peculiar. “He had come to see my father on business, you see. The next day he was invited to dinner, and three days later he asked to marry me.”

“Indeed! And it all happened with such extraordinary swiftness?”

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… Or rather, from then on, things went a little slower. For you must know that my father was not entirely willing at first, and conditioned quite a long delay. In the first place, he wanted to keep me with him, and he had still other reasons. But⁠ ⁠…”

“But?”

“But I wanted it to happen,” she said with a smile, and again the little light-blue vein gave her face a distressed and sickly appearance.

“Ah, you wanted it to happen.”

“Yes, and I showed a decently steady determination, as you see⁠ ⁠…”

“As I see. Yes.”

“… So that my father finally had to give in.”

“And then you left him and his violin, left the old house, the luxuriant garden, the spring and your six girl friends, and went your way with Herr Klöterjahn.”

“And went my way.⁠ ⁠… You have a strange manner of expressing yourself, Herr Spinell! Almost biblical! Yes, I left the house, since that is Nature’s arrangement.”

“Yes, that is Nature’s arrangement.”

“And then, it was a matter of my future happiness.”

“Of course. And it came, this happiness⁠ ⁠…”

“It came in the hour, Herr Spinell, when they first brought me little Anton, our little Anton, and when he wailed so powerfully with his sturdy little lungs⁠ ⁠… for he is so strong and healthy⁠ ⁠…”

“I have heard you speak several times of the health of your little Anton. He must be unusually healthy?”

“He certainly is. And he looks so comically like my husband!”

“Ah!⁠ ⁠… Yes, so it all happened that way. And now you are no longer called Eckhof, but something else, and you have a sturdy little Anton, and you are ailing somewhere in the trachea.”

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… And you are an out-and-out enigmatical man, Herr Spinell, I can assure you⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, heaven knows you are that!” said the Rätin Spatz, who was still at hand.

Herr Klöterjahn’s wife often occupied herself deeply with this conversation. Noncommittal as it had been, still it had something concealed at bottom which nourished her preoccupations with herself. Was this the harmful influence which was affecting her? Her weakness increased, and often fever set in⁠—a quiet flame which always left her in a mood of extravagance, thoughtful and contented, and with a vague sense of injury. When she was not forced to remain in bed, Herr Spinell would step across to her with extreme caution on the tips of his large feet, and remain standing about two steps distant, one leg placed behind the other, and the upper part of his body bent slightly forward. He would speak to her in a voice softened with worship, as if his sheer devotion would pick her up tenderly and lay her on a bed of clouds, where no harsh sound, no earthly irritation, could ever reach her. At such times she would remember the way Herr Klöterjahn had of saying: “Slowly, Gabriele, take care, my angel, and keep your mouth closed!” he said it as though he were slapping you on the shoulder with crude good humour. But she would dismiss this recollection hastily, and lie back purged and weak in the bed of clouds Herr Spinell was so kind as to prepare for her.

One day she went back abruptly to the conversation they had had about her parents and her girlhood.

“And it is really true, Herr Spinell,” she said, “that you could have seen the crown?”

And although this talk had occurred fourteen days ago, he knew immediately what she meant, and he assured her with emotion that back there at the spring, as she was sitting there with her six girl friends, he would have seen the little crown glittering⁠—would have seen it glittering in her hair.

A few days later one of the patients asked her out of politeness how her little Anton was doing back home. She sent a swift glance towards Herr Spinell, who was standing near her, and then answered somewhat peevishly: “How is he? Both he and my husband are doing very well, thank you.”

VIII

Toward the end of February, one chilly day which was even clearer and more brilliant than all that had preceded it, a general feeling of good nature pervaded Einfried. The ladies and gentlemen with heart trouble were speaking to one another with flushed cheeks, the diabetic general was humming like a child, and the gentlemen with the uncontrollable legs were quite beside themselves. What was it all about? Nothing less than that a general excursion had been arranged for, a sleigh-ride through the hills in vehicles with jangling bells and snapping whips. Dr. Leander had decided on this as an entertainment for his patients.

Naturally, the “serious cases” had to stay behind. Those miserable serious cases! Everyone got together and pledged themselves to keep the whole thing a secret from them; it felt quite pleasant to be able to exercise a little sympathy and consideration. But even some who very easily could have taken part in the outing did not do so. As to Fräulein von Osterloh, she was excused without a word. Anyone as loaded with household duties as she could not afford to think of sleigh-rides. Her presence was needed in Einfried. And, in short, she stayed. But all were distressed when Herr Klöterjahn’s wife declared she preferred not to go. Dr. Leander tried in vain to urge her into taking the invigorating ride. But she claimed she was indisposed, that she had a headache, felt somewhat tired; and there was nothing to do but accept it. But the cynic and wit found occasion for the remark, “Just watch; now the decrepit baby won’t go with us, either.”

And he turned out to be right, since Herr Spinell let it be known that he intended working that afternoon⁠—he liked to apply the word “work” to his doubtful activities. But not a single soul was put out by his absence, and the disappointment was no greater when the Rätin Spatz decided to keep her younger friend company since riding made her seasick.

Immediately after the midday meal, which had been served today even before twelve, the sleighs drew up in front of Einfried, and the patients began moving across the park in lively groups, eager, excited, and bundled up snugly. Herr Klöterjahn’s wife was standing with the Rätin Spatz behind the glass door which opened on the terrace, and Herr Spinell was observing the departure from the window of his room. Amid laughing and joking, miniature battles would arise over the best seats; Fräulein von Osterloh, a fur boa around her neck, was running from one sleigh to another to shove baskets of food under the seats; Dr. Leander, his fur cap pulled down over his eyes, reviewed the whole scene once more with his glistening spectacles, then took his place and gave the sign to start.⁠ ⁠… The horses leaped forward, a woman or two let out a shriek as she fell over backwards, the bells jangled, the short-handled whips snapped and let their long cords drag in the snow behind the runners, and Fräulein von Osterloh stood at the gate waving her handkerchief until the sleighs glided out of sight at a bend in the road and the cheerful noise died away. Then she hurried back through the park to attend to urgent matters, the two women left the glass door, and almost at the same time Herr Spinell left his place of observation.

Einfried was quiet. The sleigh-party was not to be expected back before evening. The “serious cases” were lying in their rooms and suffering. Herr Klöterjahn’s wife and her older friend took a short walk together, and then went up to their rooms. Herr Spinell was also in his room, busy after his fashion. About four o’clock each of the women was brought her glass of milk, while Herr Spinell received his weak tea. Shortly afterwards, Herr Klöterjahn’s wife knocked on the wall which separated her room from Magistratsrätin Spatz’s, and said: “Let’s go down to the drawing-room for a while. I don’t know what to do with myself up here.”

“Right away, my dear!” the Rätin answered. “Just let me pull on my shoes. I have been lying down, you see.”

As might be expected, the drawing-room was empty. The two women took seats in front of the fireplace. The Rätin Spatz was embroidering flowers on a piece of canvas, and Herr Klöterjahn’s wife was also doing a bit of sewing, although she soon let her fancy work sink into her lap and looked vacantly above the arms of her chair. Finally she made a remark which it was not worth the trouble of moving her teeth for, but since the Rätin Spatz, however, asked “What’s that?” to her great humiliation she had to repeat the whole sentence. Then the Rätin Spatz asked a second time: “What’s that?” But at this moment steps were heard, the door opened, and Herr Spinell entered.

“Am I disturbing you?” he asked softly as he hesitated in the doorway. Then he looked on Herr Klöterjahn’s wife and inclined the upper part of his body in a certain tender, soaring manner.

The young woman answered: “Why, how could that be? In the first place, this room is a harbour open to all, Herr Spinell. And then again, in what way could you disturb us? I have the most decided sensation of boring the Rätin⁠ ⁠…”

At this he had nothing to answer, but allowed a smile to expose his carious teeth, and then walked somewhat stiffly under the eyes of the women to the glass door. He stopped here and looked out, with his back turned impolitely towards the women. Then he turned half around, although continuing to look out at the park. “The sun is gone. The sky has been clouding gradually. It is already getting dark.”

“Yes, indeed; everything is in shadows,” Herr Klöterjahn’s wife answered. “The sleigh-party is in for some more snow, it seems. Yesterday at this time it was still broad daylight; but now it is dark already.”

“Ah,” he said, “after all these excessively sunny weeks a little darkness is a rest to the eyes. I am quite grateful to this sun, which lights up the beautiful and the common with equally insistent clarity, that at last it has hidden itself for a while.”

“You do not like the sunlight, Herr Spinell?”

“Since I am not a painter. We become more introspective without the sun.⁠ ⁠… It is one thick grey mass of cloud. Perhaps that means thawing for tomorrow. In any case, I should not advise you to keep looking at your fancy work there, if I may say so.”

“Oh, don’t mind that, for I have already quit. But what is there to do?”

He had dropped on to the stool in front of the piano, with one arm resting on the cover. “Music⁠ ⁠…” he began. “Who ever hears music these days? Once in a while the English children sing little nigger songs, but that is all.”

“And yesterday afternoon Fräulein von Osterloh went speeding through ‘The Monastery Bells,’ ” Herr Klöterjahn’s wife remarked.

“But it is true that you play,” he said pleadingly, and stood up. “You used to play every day with your father.”

“Yes, Herr Spinell, but that was then! Back when we sat around the spring, you know⁠ ⁠…”

“But do it today!” he begged. “Just a few bars just this once! If you only knew how thirsty I am after⁠ ⁠…”

“Our family doctor as well as Dr. Leander have both forbidden it expressly, Herr Spinell.”

“They are not here, neither one nor the other! We are free⁠ ⁠… you are free! Just a few meagre chords⁠ ⁠…”

“No, Herr Spinell, we must not think of it. Who knows what sort of marvels you expect of me! And I have gotten out of practice, I assure you. I can do scarcely anything by heart.”

“Oh, then play this Scarcely-Anything! And furthermore, here are some scores, lying here, right on the piano. No, this is nothing. But here is Chopin⁠ ⁠… the Nocturnes. And now all that is necessary is for me to light the candles⁠ ⁠…”

“Please don’t expect me to play, Herr Spinell! I am not allowed. If it should hurt me?”

He was silent. He stood there in the light of the two candles; large feet, long black coat, pale grey-haired beardless face, and hanging hands. “Now I won’t ask you again,” he finally spoke very softly. “If you are afraid that it may hurt you, then by all means leave the beauty dead and dumb which might acquire utterance beneath your fingers. You have not always been so prudent. Not, at least, when you were called upon to surrender yourself to the very opposite of beauty. Then you weren’t worried about yourself, and showed a hastier and surer determination when you abandoned the spring and put off the little golden crown.⁠ ⁠… But listen,” he went on after a pause, and his voice sank even lower, “if you sit here and play the way you once did, when your father stood beside you and made his violin sing those tones which caused you to cry⁠ ⁠… then it may come about that the little golden crown will glisten secretly in your hair again⁠ ⁠…”

“Indeed?” she asked, smiling. It happened that her voice broke on this word, so that it was pronounced half hoarsely and half tonelessly. She coughed, and then said: “And they are really Chopin’s Nocturnes you have there?”

“Certainly. They are opened and everything is ready.”

“Well, then, in heaven’s name, I will play one of them. But only one, you hear? Then you must be contented forever.”

She arose, laid aside her fancy work, and went to the piano. She sat down on the stool, where a couple of bound volumes had been lying, adjusted the lights, and began turning over the pages. Herr Spinell had brought a chair up beside her, and was sitting near her like a music teacher.

She played the Nocturne in E-Sharp Major, Opus 9, Number 2. Even if she truly was somewhat out of practice, nevertheless her execution was a bit of real artistry. The piano was at best middling, but after the first few strokes she could manage it tastefully and with assurance. She displayed a nervous sense of the differentiations in tone-quality, and an imaginative feel for the slowing and speeding up of rhythm. Her touch was firm as well as soft. Under her hands the melody sang its ultimate measure of sweetness, and the little embellishments wound with a hesitating charm about her fingers.

She was wearing the dress of the day she came here: the dark, heavy coat-suit and the soft velvet embroidery⁠—all of which gave her hands and face such an unearthly frailty. The expression of her face did not change in playing, but it seemed as though the demarcation of her lips became clearer while the shadows deepened in the corners of her eyes. When she had finished, she laid her hands in her lap and went on looking at the notes. Herr Spinell continued to sit there, without a move or a sound.

She played another Nocturne⁠—a second and a third. Then she arose, but only to look for new pieces on the top of the piano.

It occurred to Herr Spinell to examine the volumes in black boards which had been lying on the stool. Suddenly he let out an unintelligible exclamation, and his large white hands began fingering passionately one of these neglected volumes.

“Impossible!⁠ ⁠… It is not true!⁠ ⁠…” he said. “And yet I am not deceiving myself!⁠ ⁠… Do you know what this is? What was lying here? What I am holding now?⁠ ⁠…”

“What is it?” she asked.

Then he pointed in silence to the titlepage. He was quite pale, let the book sink down, and gazed at her with trembling lips.

“Indeed? How does that come to be here? Give it to me, then,” she said simply. Then she arranged the score, took her seat, and after a moment of stillness began with the first page.

He sat next to her, bent forward, his head lowered, and his hands folded across his knees. She played the opening plaintively, with an excessive slowness, with disquietingly long pauses between the individual figures. The yearning-motif, a lonely, wandering voice in the night, was heard softly uttering its uneasy question. A silence, and an expectation. And see⁠ ⁠… it answers: the same weak, lonely note, only this time brighter, more tender. Another silence. And then, in that marvellous dampened sforzato which is like a sudden starting up, and the first sacred insistence of passion, the love-motif set in, rose, writhed keenly to a sweet culmination, sank back in resolution⁠—and with their deep song of heavy, pained astonishment the cellos came forward and continued the melody.

As she played on the miserable instrument, she tried with some success to bring out the effects of the orchestra. The run of the violins in their great climb rang with a brilliant precision. She played with a precise devotion, lingered credulously over every form, and raised up each element plainly and humbly like a priest lifting the holy wafer above his head. What happened? Two forces, two eager beings struggled in pain and sanctity towards each other, and embraced in a wild, enchanted hunger after the eternal and the absolute.⁠ ⁠… The overture flamed up and dropped. She stopped where the curtain opens, and kept looking in silence at the notes.

In the meantime the Rätin Spatz had reached boredom to a degree which deforms the face, drives the eyes out of the head, and produces a dreadful corpse-like appearance. Beyond that, this sort of music affected the nerves of her stomach, put this dyspeptic organism in a state of anguish which made the Rätin fear an attack of cramps. “I must go to my room,” she said weakly. “Goodbye; I’ll be back.”

Then she had left. It was much darker now. Outside, the snow could be seen falling thick and silent on the terrace. The two candles gave a restricted, wavering light.

“The second act,” he whispered; and she turned the pages and began with the second act.

A blare of horns was lost in the distance. What? Or was it the rustling of leaves? The soft gurgle of a spring? Night had already poured its silence everywhere, and there were no urgent warnings against surrender to the powers of melancholy. The holy secret was completed. The lights went out, the death-motif sank away with a peculiar, suddenly veiled quality; and with a driving impatience, melancholy let her white coverings flutter out to the lover approaching through the darkness with wide-open arms.

O abundant and insatiable rejoicing at union in the eternal Beyond-Things! Free of distressing error, escaped from the bonds of time and place, the you and the I, the meus and the tuus, melted together in an exalted happiness. The blinding malice of day might keep them apart, but no arrogant lie could deceive again these dwellers in darkness, since the strength of the magic potion had endowed them with sight. He who had looked with love on the night of death and its sweet secret, in the orgy of his vision now had only one desire, the yearning for the sacred night, the true, eternal, unifying⁠ ⁠…

Oh, fall about them, night of love, and give them that oblivion which they yearn for; encompass them with ecstasies, and make them free of this world of deceit and separation. Look, the last torch has gone out! Every thought and image has dropped away in the sacred twilight, which spreads its salvation over the anguish of madness. Then, when delusion is fading, when my eye is failing at all this glory⁠—the glory of which I was cheated by the lie of daylight; and I had been tricked into taking in its place the restless torture of my yearnings⁠—even then, O prodigy of fulfilment! even then I am the world.⁠ ⁠… And Brangäne’s dark warning-song was followed by that soaring of violins which is higher than all reason.

“I don’t understand it at all, Herr Spinell; a lot of it I can simply surmise. What does that mean, that ‘even then I am the world’?”

He explained it to her, quietly and briefly.

“Yes, so it is. But how does it come that you, who understand it so well, cannot play it, too?”

Strangely enough, he could not bear up under this harmless question. He reddened, wrung his hands, and sank back into his chair. “Those two things are seldom found together,” he at last said with an effort. “No, I cannot play.⁠ ⁠… But continue.”

And she went on into the drunken songs of this miracle play. Did love ever die? Tristan’s love? The love of your Isolde, and my Isolde? Oh, the strokes of death can never reach this eternal woman! What could death be but that which distresses us, which tricks lovers into disunion? In one sweet and, love brought them both together.⁠ ⁠… And if death destroys this, how else except with the very life of one could death be given to the other? And a mysterious interweaving of two melodies united them in the unnamed hope of Love’s Death, the endlessly inseparable enfolding in the Fairyland of night. Sweet night! Eternal night of love! All-inclusive land of holiness! Whoever has looked at you with understanding, how could he awake to desolate day again without sorrow? But ban all sorrow, friendly death! Free the hungering from the famine of awaking! O unattainable storm of rhythms; O rapture of the metaphysical certainty pressing forward chromatically! How is it acquired, how is it lost, this ravishment far from the loneliness of light? Soft desires without lies or sorrow; sublime, painless extinction; superspiritual twilight in the incommensurable! You, Isolde; I, Tristan; Tristan no longer, Isolde no longer.

Suddenly something very frightful happened. She left off playing, and held her hand over her eyes that she might peer into the darkness. And Herr Spinell turned quickly about in his chair. The door back there which led to the corridor had opened, and a strange form entered, supported on the arm of a second. It was a patient at Einfried who had not been able to take part in the sleigh-ride, but was employing this evening hour in one of her instinctive and mournful rounds of the institute; it was the wife of Pastor Höhlenrauch leaning on the arm of her nurse. Without looking up, she measured the rear of the room with uncertain, groping steps, and disappeared through the door opposite⁠—speechless and staring, wandering without consciousness. There was a long silence.

“That was the Pastorin Höhlenrauch,” he said.

“Yes, that was poor Höhlenrauch,” she answered. Then she began turning the leaves again, and played the finish to it all, played Isolde’s Liebestod.

How colourless and clear her lips were, and how the shadows had deepened in the corners of her eyes! Above the eyebrow, across her transparent forehead, the tiny, pale-blue vein was becoming disturbingly swollen. Under her industrious hands the unutterable ascent was completed, broken suddenly by that almost dissolute pianissimo which is like a floor slipping from beneath the feet, and a drop into a sublime covetousness. The abundance of a mighty attainment and conclusion broke out, was repeated⁠ ⁠… a bewildering turmoil of unrestricted rejoicing. Then it changed its form and its flow, seemed on the point of expiring, wove the yearning-motif once more into its harmonies, exhaled, perished, faded, glided away. Deep silence.

They both listened, turned their heads to one side and listened.

“Those are bells,” she said.

“They are the sleighs. I am going now.”

He arose and crossed the room. But he stopped at the door, turned about, and for a few minutes kept changing from one foot to the other. And then it happened that he, at a distance of fifteen or twenty paces from her, dropped to his knees, dropped on both knees without a word. His long black coat trailed on the floor. He kept his hands folded over his mouth, and his shoulders twitched sharply.

She sat with her hands in her lap, leaning forward away from the piano, and looking at him. A forced, uncertain smile lay on her face, and her eyes were peering meditatively with such effort into the darkness that they showed a slight tendency to bulge.

Out of the distance came the approaching sounds of bells, snapping whips, and a jumble of human voices.

IX

The sleigh-party, which was the talk of everybody for some time, had taken place on the twenty-sixth of February. It thawed on the twenty-seventh, when everything melted, dropped, splashed, and flowed; and Herr Klöterjahn’s wife was getting along excellently. On the twenty-eighth she brought up a bit of blood⁠ ⁠… oh, insignificant; but it was blood. At the same time a much greater weakness than ever before came over her, and kept her confined to her bed.

Dr. Leander examined her, and his face was as hard as stone. Then he ordered what is prescribed by science: cracked ice, morphine, absolute quiet. Furthermore, the next day overwork forced him to transfer the case to Dr. Müller, who accepted it dutifully and faithfully, and in all mildness; a quiet, pale, insignificant, and unhappy man, whose modest and unheralded activities were devoted to the nearly well and the hopeless.

The opinion he expressed first of all was that the separation between the Klöterjahn couple had continued for quite a while now. It would be especially pleasant if Herr Klöterjahn could pay another visit to Einfried, provided that his thriving business would permit it. A letter could be sent to him, perhaps even a short telegram.⁠ ⁠… And it would certainly cheer up the young mother and strengthen her if he would bring little Anton along; and, in addition to that, the doctors would be very glad to make the acquaintance of this sturdy little Anton.

And lo, Herr Klöterjahn appeared. He had received Dr. Müller’s short telegram and came from the shore of the Baltic. He got out of the cab, called for coffee and rolls, and looked very disconcerted.

“What is it?” he asked. “Why am I called here?”

“Since it is advisable,” Dr. Müller answered, “that you remain near your wife now.”

“Advisable⁠ ⁠… advisable.⁠ ⁠… But necessary as well? I am tending to my business, my man, and times are bad and travelling is expensive. Was this journey unavoidable? I shouldn’t have anything to say, for instance, if it was the lungs; but, thank God, it is only the trachea⁠ ⁠…”

“Herr Klöterjahn,” Dr. Müller spoke softly, “in the first place, the trachea is an important organ⁠ ⁠…” He incorrectly said “in the first place,” since no “in the second place” followed.

But at the same time as Herr Klöterjahn, a plump person dressed in red, plaid, and gold had arrived at Einfried, and she it was who carried in her arms Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., the small, sturdy Anton. Yes, he was there, and no one could deny that he really was excessively healthy. White and rosy, with clean fresh clothes, he rested fragrant and fat on the red bare arm of his servant, swallowed powerful quantities of milk and chopped meat, shouted and surrendered himself in every way to his instincts.

The author, Spinell, had observed the arrival of young Klöterjahn from the window of his room. In a peculiarly veiled manner, but sharply nevertheless, he had fixed the child in his eye while it was being carried from the cab to the house. And for some time he had remained standing there with this same expression on his face.

From now on he avoided as far as possible any meeting with Anton Klöterjahn, Jr.

X

Herr Spinell was sitting “at work” in his room. It was a room like all the rest at Einfried: old-fashioned, simple, and distinguished. The massive chest of drawers had lions’ heads of metal on it; the high wall mirror was no flat surface, but made of numerous little squares fastened together with lead; there was no carpet on the blue lacquered floor in which the stiff legs of the furniture were continued as clear shadows. A spacious writing-desk stood near the window, across which the novelist had drawn a yellow curtain, probably that he might be more by himself.

In the yellowish twilight he was sitting over the escritoire, and writing⁠ ⁠… writing at one of those frequent letters which he mailed every week, and to which, ridiculously enough, he usually received no answers. A large sheet of heavy paper was lying in front of him; in the upper left-hand corner, under a mighty queerly drawn landscape, the name, Detlev Spinell, was to be read in the most completely up-to-date letters. He was covering this paper now with a small, carefully traced, and exceptionally pure handwriting.

“Dear Sir,” it began. “I am sending you the following lines because I cannot help it, because the things I have to say to you burden me, torture me, and make me tremble, because the words pour forth with such violence that I should be stifled with them if I did not venture to relieve myself of them in this letter.⁠ ⁠…”

To give truth its dues, this “pouring forth” was certainly not the case, and God only knows what useless reasons prompted Herr Spinell to assert it. Words seemed to be doing anything but pour forth from him; for a man whose everyday occupation was writing, he seemed to get along miserably slow. If anyone had seen him, he would have come to the conclusion that an author is a person to whom writing is much more difficult than to anybody else.

He would get hold of one of those little downy hairs on his cheeks between two fingertips, and twist at it for fifteen minutes at a stretch, while he stared into space and didn’t advance a line. Then he would write a few neat words, and stop again. On the other hand, it must be admitted that whatever finally appeared gave the impression of ease and vividness, even if its contents were of an unusual, questionable, and often incomprehensible character:

“It is an inevitable necessity with me that those things which I have been seeing, which have been standing before my eyes as an inextinguishable vision for weeks, should be made plain to you as well⁠ ⁠… that you should see them through my eyes in that utter clarity in which they have stood before my inner vision. I am accustomed to yielding to such compulsions, that I may adjust my experience to that of the world in general, employing properly placed words in such a manner as to make them burning and unforgettable. I trust, then, that you will give me your attention.

“I wish to state only what actually has been, and still is. I should simply like to tell a story, a very short, unspeakably moving story; to tell it without commentary, without accusations or judgments, but in my own words. It is, Sir, the story of Gabriele Eckhof, the woman whom you now call your wife. And please note: it was you that lived through it, and yet it is I whose words will be the first truly to elevate it to the importance of an experience.

“Do you remember, Sir, the garden, the old, grown-up garden behind the grey ancestral home? Green moss jutted out of the cracks in the weathered walls enclosing this dreamy wilderness. Also, do do you remember the spring in the midst of it all? Lilac-coloured flags bent over its dank edges, and a white stream muttered its secrets down over the stones. The summer day was nearing a close.

“Seven virgins were sitting in a circle around the spring. But in the hair of the seventh, the first, the one, the sinking sun seemed mysteriously to be weaving a glimmering symbol of superiority. Her eyes were like troubled dreams, and yet her pure lips were smiling.

“They were singing. They kept their narrow faces turned towards the peak of the jet, just where, in a noble, weary curve, it inclines to fall again. And their soft, high voices hovered about its slender dance. Perhaps they held their frail hands folded across their knees while they sang.

“Do you recall the picture, Sir? Did you see it? You did not see it. Your eyes were not made for that, and your ears were not made to catch the shy sweetness of its melody. If you had seen it, you would not have dared to breathe. You would have struggled to keep down the pounding of your heart. You would have had to go, back into life, into your life, to preserve deep within you for the rest of your earthly existence this vision as something untouchable and imperishably sacred. But what did you do?

“This picture should have been an end in itself, Sir. Did you have to come and destroy it, that you might continue it in vulgarity and the ugliness of pain? It was a touching and placid deification, immersed in the crepuscular glory of decay, dissolution, and extinction. An ancient line, already too weary and too noble for the facts of life, was standing at the end of its days, and its last utterances were the sounds of art, a few notes on the violin, full of the penetrative melancholy of those who are ripe for death. Did you see the eyes from which these notes lured forth tears? It is possible that the souls of the six playmates belonged to life; but the other one should have had for her sister and mistress⁠—beauty and death.

“You saw it, this beauty of death. You looked at it, but only to covet it. No reverence, no instinct to pull away, touched your heart at the thought of her appealing sanctity. It was not enough for you merely to behold; you had to possess, exploit, desecrate. How admirably you chose! You are an epicure, Sir, a plebeian epicure, a cultured peasant.

“Please let me assure you that I do not harbour the slightest desire to anger you. What I am saying is not an affront, but the formula, the simple psychological formula for your simple, artistically uninteresting personality. And I say all this only because I feel called upon to illuminate somewhat your life and actions for you, since it is my one inevitable calling on this earth to give things their names, to make them speak, and to throw more light on the unrealized. The world is full up of what I might call the ‘unconscious type.’ And I can’t bear them, all these unconscious types. I cannot stand all this blunt mindless and unthinking turmoil and commerce, this world all around me of exacerbating simplicity! I am driven with painful insistence to orient everything around me⁠—in so far as I am capable⁠—to express and bring it into consciousness, completely indifferent as to whether this results favourably or unfavourably, whether it brings with it consolation and improvement, or leaves nothing but anguish.

“As I have said, Sir, you are a plebeian epicure, a cultured peasant. Of an especially strong constitution, in one of the very lowest stages of development, with the aid of money and congenial living you have suddenly arrived at a barbaric corruption of the nervous system to an extent never before heard of in history. And along with this, you have acquired a certain lascivious refinement in your appetites. It is quite possible that when you decided to make Gabriele Eckhof your own, the muscles of your gullet went through the same smacking procedure as at the sight of some rare food, of a tasty soup.

“The truth is that you led her and her half-dreamed desires astray, that you took her out of the rich garden into life and ugliness, that you gave her your common name, and made her a wife, a housekeeper, a mother. You have lowered this shy, weary, full-hearted beauty of death with its exalted inutility; you have brought it down to subjection beneath the vulgarity of everyday life, and that stupid, relentless, and detestable idol which we call nature. And not a single suspicion of the deep degradation of your actions has ever crossed your rustic consciousness.

“Again; what happens? She, with eyes like troubled dreams, presents you with a child. Every bit of blood and strength which she possesses, she gives to this being which is a continuation of the low-minded existence of its father⁠ ⁠… she gives this, and dies. Sir, she is dying! And if she does not depart in commonness, if at last she has risen out of the depths of her denigration, and passed away proud and purified under the deadly kiss of beauty, it is I that saw to it. You, in the meantime, were trying to while away the hours with chambermaids in lonely corridors.

“But her child, Gabriele Eckhof’s son, lives, flourishes, and triumphs. Perhaps it will follow in the steps of its father, and become a good business man, a taxpayer and a well fed member of the community. Or perhaps a soldier or an official, some stupid, dependable pillar of the state. In any case, an amusical, normally functioning creature, trustworthy and unscrupulous, sturdy and ignorant.

“Kindly accept the confession, Sir, that I hate you, you and your child, because I hate the life, the common, ridiculous, and yet conquering life which you represent⁠—the eternal contrast and deadly enemy to beauty. I do not dare to say that I detest you. I cannot. I will be frank. You are the stronger. I have only one thing to bring against you in battle, the sublime weapon and engine of vengeance of the weak: mind and the word. Today I have made use of these. For this letter⁠—and here, too, I am being frank⁠—is nothing but an act of retaliation, and I rejoice if there is only one word here which is sharp, brilliant, and beautiful enough to reach you, to make you feel some force outside of you, and just for an instant make your robust imperturbability vacillate.

And Herr Spinell put this letter in a stamped envelope, provided it with a neatly written address, and mailed it.

XI

Herr Klöterjahn knocked on the door of Herr Spinell’s room. He was holding a large, neatly written sheet of paper in his hand, and looked like a man who had decided to proceed with energy. The mail had done its duty; the letter had taken its journey; it had made the remarkable trip from Einfried to Einfried, and arrived in the proper hands. The time was now four o’clock in the afternoon.

As Herr Klöterjahn entered, Herr Spinell was sitting on the sofa, reading his own novel with the bewildering cover designs. He arose and looked at his visitor with a surprised interrogation, although he plainly reddened.

“Good day,” said Herr Klöterjahn. “I hope you will pardon my disturbing you. But may I ask whether you wrote this?” He held out the large, neatly written sheet of paper in his left hand, and beat on it with the back of his right until it crackled. Then he stuck his right hand in the pocket of his wide, comfortable trousers, turned his head to one side, and, as with a good many people, opened his mouth to listen.

Herr Spinell was smiling peculiarly. He was smiling amiably; somewhat puzzled and half apologetic, he drew his hand across his head as though he were thinking, and said: “Why, to be sure⁠ ⁠… yes⁠ ⁠… I took the liberty⁠ ⁠…”

The point was that he had been too indulgent this morning, and slept until nearly noon. Consequently, he was suffering from a bad conscience and a stuffy head, felt a bit nervous and very ill-fit to defend himself. In addition, a spring breeze had set in, causing him to relax and making him a bit despondent. All this must be mentioned as an explanation of how it happened that he conducted himself so poorly in the following scene.

“So! Aha! Fine!” said Herr Klöterjahn, pressing his chin against his breast, raising his eyebrows, stretching his arms, and making countless other little gestures, to plunge heartlessly into the matter once this question of form had been settled. Out of delight in his person, he went a bit too far in these gestures; what finally followed could not completely correspond to the threatening punctiliousness of his preparations. But Herr Spinell was quite pale.

“Very fine!” Herr Klöterjahn repeated, and shook his head vigorously to show how impregnably sure he was of his case. “I wouldn’t waste a word on this scribble, frankly, it would simply be too cheap for attention, if it didn’t clear up for me certain things I didn’t understand before, certain changes.⁠ ⁠… However, that doesn’t concern you, and doesn’t belong here. I am a busy man; I have better things to think about than your unutterable visions⁠ ⁠…”

“I wrote ‘inextinguishable vision,’ ” Herr Spinell said, pulling himself up. This was the one time he made any show of dignity.

“Inextinguishable⁠ ⁠… unutterable⁠ ⁠…” Herr Klöterjahn answered, and glanced at the manuscript. “You write a very miserable hand, my friend; I shouldn’t like to have you working in my office. At first glance it seems good enough, but held up to the light it is full of all sorts of gaps and wobbles. But that is your affair, and has nothing to do with me. I came to tell you that, in the first place, you are an ass.⁠ ⁠… Now, let us hope that has been made known to you. Besides that, you are a thorough coward, and I don’t need to spend much time making that clear to you. My wife wrote me once that you never look into the faces of the women you meet, but just barely graze them that you might carry away a lovely impression, out of fear of the truth. Unfortunately, later on she quit telling me of you in her letters; otherwise, I should have some other stories about you. But there you are. You say ‘beauty’ every third word, but it is nothing but shooting off, and sham and envy, and that’s where your shameless reference to ‘lonely corridors’ comes from; it was supposed to knock me over, and instead it was funny, just plain funny! Do you get all that straight now? Have I ‘illuminated your life and actions,’ you poor devil? Although it is not my ‘infallible calling,’ ha, ha!”

“I wrote ‘inevitable calling,’ ” Herr Spinell interposed, but he gave up the field again immediately. He stood there helpless and rebuked, like a big, whimpering, grey-haired schoolboy.

“Inevitable⁠ ⁠… infallible⁠ ⁠… You are a low-down coward, I tell you. You see me at table every day. You speak to me and smile, you pass things to me and smile, you wish me a pleasant day and smile. And then all of a sudden you sling all this muck of stupid calumnies at me. Ha, yes, you have courage on paper! If it comes down to a ridiculous letter like this. But you have been doing underhanded things against me, acting behind my back; I see that now plainly enough. Although you don’t need to get the idea that it has done you any good! In case you entertain the hope that you have put any nonsense into my wife’s head, then you’re all wrong, my dear sir, for she’s too intelligent a person for that! Or finally, if you think that she received me, the child and me, any differently from usual when we arrived, then you’ve put the last touch to your crudeness! If she didn’t kiss the little fellow, it was simply out of caution, because now the theory is that it might not be the trachea, but the lungs, and in that case we can’t be sure.⁠ ⁠… Although I ought to assure you in addition that as to the lungs and your ‘Sir, she is dying!’ you are an ass!”

At this point Herr Klöterjahn tried to recover his wind. He had become very angry by now, kept continually piercing the air with the index finger of his right hand and soiling the manuscript in his left hand most wretchedly. Between his blond English side-whiskers, his face was frightfully red, and his cloudy forehead was rent with swollen veins like choleric lightning.

“You hate me,” he went on, “and you would detest me if I were not the stronger. Yes, so I am, by God; I’ve got my heart in the right place, while yours for the most part is in your shoes. And I’d pound the life out of you and your ‘mind and the word,’ you sneaking idiot, if it weren’t against the law. But I don’t mean to say by that, my friend, that I’m going to take your invectives and let it go at that. And when I get home and show that ‘common name’ to my lawyer, we’ll see if you don’t get the surprise of your life. My name is a good one, sir, because I have made it good, and if anyone would lend a penny on yours⁠—well, you can decide that question for yourself, you prowling loafer! You have to be dealt with by law! You are a menace to the community! You put people out of their heads!⁠ ⁠… But you don’t need to imagine that you have succeeded this time, you patronizing sneak! I am not usually put to rout by individuals such as you. My heart is in the right place⁠ ⁠…”

Herr Klöterjahn was now really aroused to the utmost. He shouted, and claimed over and over that his heart was in the right place.

“ ‘They were singing.’ Bosh. They weren’t singing! They were darning. And besides, as far as I caught, they were talking about a recipe for potato-cakes. And when I mention that ‘decay’ and ‘dissolution’ to my father-in-law, he’ll get his attorney after you as well, be sure of that.⁠ ⁠… Did you see the picture? Did you see it? Naturally I saw it, but I don’t appreciate such things, which explains why I didn’t catch my breath and flee. I don’t barely graze on women’s faces; I look right at them, and if they please me, and want me, I take them. My heart is in the right pl⁠—”

There was a knock. Nine or ten sharp raps on the door one after the other⁠ ⁠… a slight persistent commotion of anxiety which silenced Herr Klöterjahn. And a voice which wouldn’t stop, driven to impropriety by distress, kept saying in the greatest haste: “Herr Klöterjahn, Herr Klöterjahn, oh, is Herr Klöterjahn there?”

“Wait outside,” Herr Klöterjahn growled. “What is it? I am busy here.”

“Herr Klöterjahn,” said the faltering, breaking voice, “you must come⁠ ⁠… the doctors are there, too⁠ ⁠… oh, it is terribly sad⁠ ⁠…”

He got to the door with one stride and flung it open. The Rätin Spatz was standing outside. She held her handkerchief over her mouth, and big, elongated tears were dropping into it by twos.

“Herr Klöterjahn,” she broke out. “It is so terribly sad.⁠ ⁠… She brought up so much blood, so awfully much.⁠ ⁠… She was sitting up very quietly in bed humming a bit of music to herself, and then it came, O God, so much of it⁠ ⁠…”

“Is she dead?” Herr Klöterjahn shrieked. He grabbed the Rätin by the shoulder and began shaking her in the doorway. “No, not quite, no? Not quite yet; she can still see me⁠ ⁠… Did she bring up a little blood again? From the lungs? I’ll admit, it might be from the lungs⁠ ⁠… Gabriele!” he spoke suddenly, his eyes beginning to fill, and it was evident what a good, kindly, warm, human feeling broke over him. “Yes, I’m coming!” and he pushed the Rätin out of the room and down the corridor. From quite a distance down the twisting hallway could be heard a rapidly vanishing “Not quite, no?⁠ ⁠… From the lungs?⁠ ⁠…”

XII

Herr Spinell was standing in the same place he had stood during Herr Klöterjahn’s so rudely interrupted visit. He was gazing at the open door. Finally he made a few steps forward and listened intently. But everything was quiet, so that he closed his door and went back to his room.

For a while he looked at himself in the mirror. Then he went over to the writing-desk, took a little flask and a glass out of one of the pigeonholes, and poured himself a cognac⁠—and nobody could blame him. Then he stretched out on the sofa and closed his eyes.

The upper shutter of his window was open. Outside in the park of Einfried the birds were twittering; and in these frail, pert little noises spring found its full, penetrative expression. Once Herr Spinell spoke to himself softly. “Infallible calling⁠ ⁠…” Then he twisted his head back and forth and sucked the air through his teeth, as though he were suffering with neuralgia.

It was impossible for him to rest and collect himself. We are not made for such heavy experiences as that!⁠ ⁠… Through a process of the spirit which it would take too long to analyse, Herr Spinell came to the conclusion that he would get up and move about a bit, walk for a while in the open air. He took his hat and left the room.

As he stepped out of the house and the soft, aromatic air surrounded him, he turned his head and let his eyes wander slowly along the wall until they came to a certain window. It was covered with a curtain; his gaze clung there for a while, earnest and gloomy. Then he put his hands behind his back and began walking along the gravel path. He walked, lost in thought.

The flowerbeds were still covered, the trees and bushes were still bare. But the snow was gone, and the roads showed only here and there any traces of moisture. The broad park with its grottoes, arbours, and little pavilions lay in an excellently coloured afternoon light, with strong shadows and a full, yellow sun; and the black branches of the trees stood out in sharp, delicate outline against the bright sky.

It was about the time when the sun increases in size, when the formless mass of brilliance becomes a noticeably sinking disk, a milder, broader flame which the eye can bear. Herr Spinell did not see the sun. His path was so situated that the sun was hidden from him. He was walking with lowered head, humming a little bit of music to himself, just a few bars, one figure mounting plaintively and uneasily, the yearning-motif.⁠ ⁠… But suddenly, with a jerk, one short, convulsive intake of breath, he stopped dead, and his wide-open eyes stared out from under heavily wrinkled brows with an expression of horror and defence.

The road had made a turn; now it led in the direction of the sinking sun. It was pierced by two slender strips of cloud with golden edges. It stood out large and oblique in the sky, setting the tops of the trees on fire and pouring its reddish-yellow light across the park. And in the midst of this golden illumination, with the powerful halo of the sun’s disk just above, a plump somebody, dressed in red, gold, and plaid, was standing prominently in the road; her right hand was resting on a large hip, while with her left hand she was moving slowly back and forth a gracefully formed baby-carriage. But in this carriage the child was sitting, Anton Klöterjahn, Jr., Gabriele Eckhof’s bouncing son.

He was dressed in a white padded coat and a large white hat; he was chubby-cheeked, and sat magnificently among his pillows. His eyes met those of Herr Spinell gleefully and unerringly. The novelist wanted to retreat. If he had been a man, he would have possessed the strength to pass by this unexpected sight with its flood of sunshine, and continue his walk. But just then, monstrously enough, Anton Klöterjahn began to laugh and rejoice. He screeched in unexplained delight. It almost seemed uncanny.

God only knows just what started him⁠—whether it was the black form in front of him which threw him into such wild merriment, or whether some excess of animal well-being had come over him. In one hand he was holding a bone teething-ring and in the other a tin popgun. He extended both of these objects hilariously out into the sunlight, shook them and banged them together as though he were trying to shoo someone away with scorn. His eyes were almost closed with pleasure, and his mouth was so yawningly agape that his rosy gums, every bit of them, were visible. Also, he threw his head about, meanwhile exulting.

Then Herr Spinell turned his back and got away from there. Followed by the jubilations of the little Klöterjahn, holding his arms in a certain cautious and stiffly gracile manner, he walked over the gravel with the vehement, yet hesitating steps of one who seeks to hide the fact that he is⁠—inwardly⁠—on the run.