g
it; I had so much to think about, but I forgot everything owing to the
book"--but it did not make her forget anything. She felt as though she
were in great trouble, and that that was making her dull. Even duller,
more indifferent to outward things than at the time of her father's and
mother's deaths. She had read so much in those years of mourning, and
with special interest, as though the old poems had been given to her
anew and the new ones were a cheering revelation. She could not read
anything now, could not follow another's thoughts. She clung to her own
thoughts. True, her eyes flew over the page, but when she got to the
bottom she did not know what she had read. It was an intolerable
condition. Oh, owh much she would have liked to have taken an
interest in something. What would she not have given only to be able to
laugh heartily for once; she had never experienced a similar longing
for cheerfulness, gaiety and humour before. Oh, what a relief it would
have been for her if she could have laughed and cried. Now she could
not laugh, but--alas!--not cry either, and that was the worst: her eyes
remained dry. But the tears of sorrow she had not wept burnt her heart
and wore out her life with their unshed salty moisture.

No, death was not the most terrible that could happen. There were
more terrible things than that. It was terrible when one had to say to
oneself: "You have brought all your suffering on yourself. Why were
you not satisfied? Why must you take by force what nature had refused?"
It was more terrible when one felt how one's domestic happiness, one's
married happiness, love, faith, unity, how all that intimately unites
two people was beginning to totter--for did she not feel every day how
her husband was getting colder and colder, and that she also treated
him with more indifference? Oh, the son, that third person, it was he
who parted them. How miserably all her theories about training,
influence, about being born in the spirit had been overthrown. Wolfgang
was not the child in which she and her husband were united in body and
soul--he was and would remain of alien blood. And he had an alien soul.
Poor son!

All at once a discerning compassion shot up in the heart of the
woman, who for days, weeks, months, even years, had felt nothing but
bitterness and mortification, ay, many a time even something like
revolt against the one who thus disturbed her days. How could she be so
very angry with him, who was