in saying that Jordan was bringing up his
daughters like princesses. Both were far removed from the customary
things of life: the one was translated to the realm of darkness, the
other to that of light.

Daniel saw both of them. They were just as strange to him as he to them.
He saw the brother, too, a tall, glib, dapper youth. He saw the old
house with its dilapidated stairs, its rooms filled with cumbersome,
provincial furniture. He saw the alternating currents of life in this
family: there was now rest, now unrest, now quiet, now storm. Life
flowed out from the house, and then life, the same or of a different
origin, flowed back in again. When he came, he talked with Jordan
himself rather than with any one else; for he always knew when Jordan
would be at home. They spoke in a free and easy fashion and about things
in general. If their conversation could be characterised more fully, it
might be said that Daniel was reserved and Jordan tactful. Gertrude sat
by the table and attended to her needlework.

Daniel came and warmed himself by the stove. If he was offered a
sandwich or a cup of coffee he declined. If the offer was made with
noticeable insistency, he shook his head and distorted the features of
his face until he resembled an irritated ape. It was the peasant spirit
of defiance in him that made him act this way. He nourished a measure of
small-minded anxiety lest he be indebted to somebody for something. To
temptations, yielding to which would have been spiritually mortifying,
he was impervious. When, consequently, his need became overpowering, he
simply stayed away.

XI

His want grew into a purple sheen. To him there was an element of the
ridiculous in the whole situation: it was 1882 and he had nothing to
eat; he was twenty-three years old and quite without food.

Frau Hadebusch, virago that she could be when a dubious debtor failed to
fulfil his obligations, stormed her way up the steps. The rent was long
overdue, and uncanny councils were being held in the living room, in
which an invalid from the Wasp's Nest and a soap-maker from Kamerarius
Street were taking part.

In his despair, Daniel thought of entering the army. He reported at the
barracks, was examined--and rejected because of a hollow chest.

At first there was the purple sheen. He saw it as he stood on the
hangman's bridge and looked down into the water where pieces of ice were
drifting about. But when h