hat the future may bring? And
passion? There are many varieties of passion. It is the term that every
swain, washed and unwashed, uses in referring to his lusts. I had never
felt a passion for which a woman was guilty. But now one has seized me
with hide and hair. I had imagined that I could get out of it and not
bring you into it; impossible! I am burning up with this passion,
Gertrude, my whole being has been changed by it; and if help is not
given me, I will be ruined."

For a time there was a death-like stillness in the room; then he
continued.

"But where is help to come from? It is strange; never until this thing
happened did I know what holds us two together, you and me. Threads are
being spun back and forth between us which no hand may touch without
withering, as it is written in the Bible. There is a secret, a sacred
secret, and if I offended it I would feel as though I had strangled the
unborn child in your womb; and not only the child in your womb, but all
the unborn children in my own breast. There is in the life of each man a
woman in whom his own mother becomes young again, and to whom he is
bound by an unseen, indestructible, umbilical cord. Face to face with
this woman, his love, great or small, even his hate, his indifference,
becomes a phantom, just as everything that we give out becomes a phantom
compared with what is given to us. And there is another woman who is my
own creation, the fruit of my dreams; she is my picture; I have created
her from my own blood; she lay in me just as the seed lay in the bud.
And she must be mine once she has been unveiled and made known to me, or
I will perish of loneliness and maddened longing."

The extravagant man pressed his face to the pillow and groaned: "She
must be mine, or I will never get up from this bed. But if my way to her
passes over you, Gertrude, I would have to cry out with Faust: 'Oh, had
I never been born!'"

Gertrude never uttered a sound. Minute after minute passed by. Daniel,
growing calmer, listened to see if he could not hear some sound in the
room. He heard nothing. The silence of his wife began to fill him with
anxiety; he rose up in bed. The moon had gone down; it was pitch dark.
He felt around for some matches, and lighted a candle. Holding it in his
hand, he bent over Gertrude. She was as pale as death; she was looking
at the ceiling with wide-opened eyes.

"Put the candle out, Daniel," she whispered, "I have something to say to
you."