able to keep on rowing, I should
certainly.... Don't refuse my thanks, I beg of you: accept them."

She put out her hand; he pressed it. He looked up at her with quiet
surprise and failed to understand her. He did not doubt but that she had
that morning left the castle with the intention of committing suicide.
Had she felt remorse on the water, or had she not dared? Did she want to
live on and did she therefore turn back? Was she so shallow that she had
already recovered from the great grief which had crushed her the night
before? Did she realize that life rolls with indifferent chariot-wheels
over everything, whether joy or pain, that is part of ourselves and that
it is best to care for nothing and also to feel nothing? What of all
this applied to her? He was unable to fathom it. And once more he saw
himself standing perplexed before the question of love! What was this
feeling worth, if it weighed so little in a woman's heart? How much did
it weigh with him for Alexa? What was it then?... Or was it something
... something quite different?

At dinner Valerie talked as usual and he continued not to understand
her. It irritated him, his want of penetration of the human heart: how
could he develop it? A future ruler ought to be able to see things at a
glance.... And suddenly, perhaps merely because of his desire for human
knowledge, the thought arose within him that she was concealing her
emotions, that perhaps she was still suffering intensely, but that she
was pretending and bearing up: was she not a princess of the blood? They
all learnt that, they of the blood, to pretend, to bear up! It was bred
in their bones. He looked at her askance, as he sat next to her: she was
quietly talking across him to the queen. He did not know whether he had
guessed right and he still hesitated between the two thoughts: was she
bearing up, or was she shallow? But, yet he was happy at being able to
hesitate about her and to refute that first suspicion of shallowness by
his second thought. He was happy in this, not solely because of Valerie,
that she should be better than he had thought at first; he was happy
especially for the general conclusion which he was able to draw: that a
person is mostly better, thinks more deeply, cherishes nobler feelings
than he allows to appear in the everyday commonplaces of life, which
compel him to occupy himself with momentary trifles and phrases. A
delicate satisfaction took possession of him that he had t