ne was calling him; but from where? His wife? The distant,
gloomy, waiting one? He closed the piano; the echo of the noise made
thereby rebounded from the church wall through his window.

He put out the lamp, went into his bedroom, and undressed by the light
of the moon. The border of the curtain was embroidered with heavy
Vitruvian scrolls, the shadows of which were reflected on the floor;
they made jagged, goalless paths. All these lines consisted after all of
only one line.

As he lay in bed his heart began to hammer. Suddenly he knew, without
looking, that Gertrude was not asleep; that she was lying there staring
at the ceiling just as he was. "Gertrude!" he called.

From the slight rustling of the pillow he concluded that she turned her
face to him.

"Don't you hear me?"

"Yes, Daniel."

"You must give me some advice; you must help me: help me and your
sister, otherwise I cannot say what may happen."

He stopped and listened, but there was not a stir: the stillness was
absolute.

"It is at times possible to remain silent out of consideration for
others," he continued, "but if the silence is maintained too long,
deception follows, and falsehood does not fail. But of what use is
candour if it thrusts a knife into the heart of another merely in order
to prepare an unblocked path for him who is candid? What good does it do
to confess if the other does not understand? Two are already bleeding to
death; shall the third meet with the same fate merely in order to say
that the matter was talked over? The truth is, too many words have
already been spoken, gruesome, shameless words, at the sound of which
the innocent night of the senses vanishes. And must one bleed to death
when it becomes clearer and clearer that those are not eternal laws
against which war is being waged? How can I, dwarf that I am, attack
eternal laws? No, it is the frail, mutable customs of human society--?
Are you listening, Gertrude?"

A "yes" that sounded like a note from a bird on a distant hill greeted
his ears: it was the answer to his question.

"I have reached the point where silence is no longer thinkable: there is
no going any farther without you. I will neither exaggerate nor have
recourse to conventional phrases: I will not speak of passion nor say
that it could not be helped. It is just barely possible that everything
can be helped; that a man could always have done differently if he had
begun soon enough. But who can ever tell w