Despite the rain, Daniel and Benda strolled around the city moat until midnight.

The very thing that lay heaviest on Daniel’s heart, as was obvious from the expression on his face, he never mentioned. He told of his work, his travels in connection with the old manuscripts, his position as organist and in the conservatory, but all in such a general, detached, and distraught way, so tired and bewildered, that Benda was filled with an embarrassed anguish that made courteous attention difficult if not impossible.

In order to get him to talk more freely, Benda remarked that he had not heard of the death of Gertrude and Eleanore until his return. He said he was terribly pained to hear of it, and, try as he might, he could not help but brood over it. But he had no thought of persuading Daniel to give him the mournful details. He merely wished to convince himself that Daniel had become master of the anguish he had gone through,—master of it at least inwardly.

Instead of making a direct and logical reply, Daniel said with a twitching of his lips: “Yes, I know, you have been here for quite a while already. Inwardly I was surprised at your silence. But it is not easy to start up a renewed friendship with such a problematic creature as I am.”

“You know you are wrong when you say that,” responded Benda calmly, “and therefore I refuse to explain my long waiting. You never were problematic to me, nor are you now. I find you at this moment just as true and whole as you always were, despite the fact that you avoid me, crouch before me, barricade yourself against me.”

Daniel’s breast heaved as if in the throes of a convulsion. He said falteringly: “First let that old confidence return and grow. I must first become accustomed to the thought that there is a man near me who feels with me, sympathises with me, understands me. To be sure, you want me to talk. But I cannot talk, at least not of those things about which you would like to hear. I am afraid: I shudder at the thought; I have forgotten how; words mock me, make me feel ashamed. Even when I have good dreams, I personally am as happily and blessedly silent in them as the beast of the field. I shudder at the thought of reaching down into my soul and pulling out old, rusty things and showing them to you—mouldy fruit, slag, junk—showing them to you, you who knew me when all within me was crystal.”

He fixed his eyes on the clouds and then continued: “But there is probably another means, Friedrich. Look, friend, look! It was always your affair to look, to behold. Look, but see to it that you do not make me writhe before you like a worm in the dust! And when you have looked—wisdom needs only one spoken word for ten that are unspoken. This one word you will surely draw from me.”

Benda, deeply moved, remained silent: “Is it the fault of a woman?” he asked gently, as they crossed the drawbridge and entered the desolate old door leading to the castle.

“The fault of a woman? No! Not really the fault of a woman. It is rather the fault of a man—my fault. Many a fate reaches the decisive point in happiness, many not until coloured with guilt. And guilt is bitter. The fault of a woman!” he repeated, in a voice that threw off a gruesome echo in the vaulted arch of the gateway to the castle. “There is to be sure a woman there; and when one has anything to do with her, he finds himself with nothing left but his eyes for weeping.”

They left the gateway. Benda laid one hand on Daniel’s shoulder, and pointed in silence at the sky with the other. There were no stars to be seen; nothing but clouds. Benda however had the stars in mind. Daniel understood his gesture. His eyelids closed; around his mouth there was an expression of vehement grief.

II

Benda was convinced, not merely that one great misfortune had already taken place, but that a still greater was in the making.

Whenever he thought of Dorothea, the picture that came to his mind was one that filled him with fear. And yet, he thought, she must have some remarkable traits, otherwise Daniel would never have chosen her as his life companion. He wanted to meet her.

He had Daniel invite him in to tea. He called one evening early in the afternoon.

She received him with expressions of ostentatious joy. She said she could hardly wait until he came, for there was nothing in the world that made such an impression on her as a man who had really run great risks, who had placed his very life at stake. She could not become tired of asking him questions. At each of his laconic replies she would shake her head with astonishment. Then she rested her elbows on her knees, placed her head in her hands, bent over and stared at him as though he were some kind of prodigy—or monster.

She asked him whether he had been among cannibals, whether he had shot any savages, whether he had hunted lions, and whether it was really true that every Negro chieftain had hundreds of wives. When she asked this question she made an insidious face, and remarked that Europeans would do the same thing if the law allowed.

Thereupon she said that she could not recall having seen him, when still a child, in her father’s house, and she was surprised at this, for he had such a striking personality. She devoured him with her eyes; they began to burn as they always did when she wanted to make some kind of human capture, and blind greed came over her. She unbent; she spoke in her very sweetest voice; in her laugh and her smile there was, in fact, something irresistible, something like that trait we notice in good, confiding, but at times obstinate children.

But she noticed that this man studied her, not as if she were a young married woman who were trying to please him and gain his sympathy, rather as a curious variety of the human species. There was something in his face that made her tremble with irritation, and all of a sudden her eyes were filled with hate and distrust.

Benda felt sorry for her. This everlasting attempt to make a seductive gesture, this fishing for words that would convey a double meaning, this self-betrayal, this excitement about nothing, made him feel sad. Dorothea did not seem to him a bad woman. Whatever else she might be accused of, it did not seem to him that she was guilty of downright immoral practices. He felt that she was merely misguided, poisoned, a phantom and a fool.

His mind went back to certain Ethiopian women in the very heart of Africa; he thought of their noble walk, the proud restfulness of their features, their chaste nudeness, and their inseparability from the earth and the air.

He nevertheless understood his friend: the musician could not help but succumb to the charms of the phantom; the lonely man sought the least lonely of all human beings.

As he was coming to this conclusion, Daniel entered the room. He greeted Benda, and said to Dorothea: “There is a girl outside who says she has some ostrich feathers for you. Did you order any feathers?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Dorothea hastily, “it is a present from my friend, Emmy BÜttinger.”

“Who’s she?”

“You don’t know her? Why, she is the sister of Frau Feistelmann. You must help me,” she said, turning to Benda, “for you must know all about this kind of things. There where you have been ostriches must be as thick as chickens here at home.” Laughing, she went out, and returned in due time with a big box, from which, cautiously and with evident delight, she took two big feathers, one white, one black. Holding them by the stem, she laid them across her hair, stepped up to the mirror, and looked at herself with an intoxicated mien.

In this mien there was something so extraordinary, indeed uncanny, that Benda could not help but cast a horrified glance at Daniel.

“This is the first time I ever knew what a mirror was,” he said to himself.

III

That evening Daniel visited Benda in his home. Benda showed him some armour and implements he had brought back with him from Africa. In explaining some of the more unusual objects, he described at length the customs of the African blacks.

Then he was seized with a headache, sat down in his easy chair, and was silent for a long while. He suddenly looked like an old man. The ravages his health had suffered while in the tropics became visible.

“Did you ever see Dorothea’s mother?” he asked, by way of breaking the long silence.

Daniel shook his head: “It is said that she is vegetating, a mere shadow of her former self, in some kind of an institution in Erlangen,” he replied.

“I have been told that neither Andreas DÖderlein nor his daughter has ever, in all these years, taken the slightest interest in the unfortunate woman,” continued Benda. “Well, as to Andreas DÖderlein, I have always known what to expect of him.”

Daniel looked up. “You hinted once that DÖderlein was guilty of reprehensible conduct with regard to his wife. Do you recall? Is that in any way connected with Dorothea and her life? Do you care to discuss the matter?”

“I have no objection whatever to throwing such light on the incident as I have,” replied Benda. “It does have to do with Dorothea, and it explains, perhaps, some things about her. That is, it is possible that her character is in part due to the kind of father she grew up under and the kind of mother she lost when a mere child. It is strange the way these things work out: I am myself, in a way, interwoven with your own fate.”

He was silent for a while; memories were rushing to his mind. Then he began: “If you had ever known Marguerite DÖderlein, she would have been just as unforgettable to you as she is to me. She and Eleanore—those were the two really musical women I have known in my life. They were both all nature, all soul. Marguerite’s youth was a prison; her brother Carovius was the jailer. When she married DÖderlein, she somehow fancied she would escape from that prison, but she merely exchanged one for the other. And yet she hardly knew how it all came about. She accepted everything just as it came to her with unwavering fidelity and gentleness. Her soul remained unlacerated, unembittered.”

He rested his head on his hand; his voice became gentler. “We loved one another before we had ever spoken a word to each other. We met each other a few times on the street, once in a while in the park; and a number of times she stole up to me in the theatre. I was not reserved: I offered her my life, but she always insisted that she could not live without her child and be happy. I respected her feelings and restrained my own. For a while things went on in this way. We tortured ourselves, practised resignation, but were drawn together again, and then DÖderlein suddenly began to be suspicious. Whether his suspicion was due to whisperings or to what he himself had at some time seen his wife do—it was impossible for her to play the hypocrite—I really do not know. At any rate he began to abuse her in the most perfidious manner. He tried to disturb her conscience. One night he went to her bed with a crucifix in his hand, and made her swear, swear on the life of her child, that she would never deceive him. He used all manner of threats and unctuous fustian. She took the oath.”

“Yes, my friend, she took the oath. And this oath seemed to her much more solemn and serious than the oath she had taken at the altar the day they were married. I knew nothing about it; she kept out of my sight. I could not endure it. One day she came to me again to say good-bye. There followed a moment when human strength was no longer of avail, and human deliberation the emptiest of words. The fatal situation developed. The delicately moulded woman succumbed to a sense of guilt; her heart grew irresponsive to feelings, her mind dark. She was stricken with the delusion that her child was slowly dying in her arms, and one day she collapsed completely. The rest is known.”

Benda got up, went over to the window, and looked out into the darkness.

Daniel felt as if a rope were being tightened about his neck. He too got up, murmured a farewell, and left.

IV

He had reached the Behaim monument when he began to walk more slowly. A short distance before him he saw a man and a woman. He recognized Dorothea.

They were speaking very rapidly and in subdued tones. Daniel followed them; and when they reached the door of his house and turned to go in, he stopped in the shadow of the church.

The man seemed to be angry and excited: Dorothea was trying to quiet him. She was standing close by him; she held his hand in hers until she unlocked the door. First she whispered, looked up at the house anxiously, and then said out loud: “Good night, Edmund. Sweet dreams!”

The man went on his way without lifting his hat. Dorothea hastened in.

Daniel was trembling in his whole body. There was something in his eyes that seemed to be beseeching; and there was something mystic about them. He watched until the light had been lighted upstairs and the window shade drawn. He was tortured by the stillness of the Square; when the clock in the tower struck eleven he thought he could hear the blood roaring in his ears.

It was only with difficulty that he dragged himself into the house. Dorothea, already in her night-gown, was sitting at the table in the living room, sewing a ribbon on the dress she had just been wearing: it had somehow got loose.

They spoke to each other. Daniel stood behind her, near the stove, and looked over at the back of her bared neck as if held by a spell. One cold shiver after another was running through his body.

“Who gave you those ostrich feathers?” he asked, suddenly and rather brusquely. The question slipped from his lips before he himself was aware of it. He would have liked to say something else.

Dorothea raised her head with a jerk. “I thought I told you,” she replied, and he noticed that she coloured up.

“I cannot believe that a perfect stranger, and a woman at that, is making you such costly presents,” said Daniel slowly.

Dorothea got up, and looked at him rather undecidedly. “Very well, if you simply must know, I bought them myself,” she said with unusual defiance. “But you don’t need to try to browbeat me like that; I’ll get the money that I paid for them. And you needn’t think for a minute that I am going to let you draw up a family budget, and expect to make me live by it.”

“You didn’t buy those feathers,” said Daniel, cutting her off in the middle of her harangue.

“I didn’t buy them, and they were not given to me! How did I get them then? Stole them perhaps?” Dorothea was scornful; but cowardice made it impossible for her to look Daniel in the face.

“I have never in my life talked to any one in this way, nor has any one ever spoken to me like that,” thought Daniel to himself. He turned deathly pale, went up to her, and placed his hand like an iron vise about her arm. “I shall permit you to waste my money; I shall not object if you fritter your time away in the company of good-for-nothing people; if you regard my health and peace of mind as of no consequence whatever, I shall say nothing; if you let your poor little child suffer and pine away, I shall keep quiet. I shall submit to all of this. And why shouldn’t I? Why should I want to have my meals served at regular hours? Why should I insist that my morning coffee be warm and my rolls fresh from the baker? Why should I be so exacting as to ask that my clothes be mended, my windows washed, my room swept, and my table in order? I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth; I have never known what it was to be comfortable.”

“Oh, listen, Daniel, it’s too bad about you,” said Dorothea in an anxious tone, “but let go of my arm.”

He loosened his grip on her arm, but did not let it go. “You may associate with whomsoever you please. Let those people treasure you to whom you are a treasure. So far as money is concerned, you can have all that I have. Here it is, take it.” He drew from his pocket an embroidered purse filled with coins, and hurled them on the table. “So that you can wear fine dresses, I will play the organ on Sundays. So that you can go to masquerade balls and parties of all kinds, I will try to beat a little music into some twenty-odd unmusical idiots. I will do more than that: I will promise never to bother myself about your behaviour: I will never ask you where you have been or where you are going. But listen, Dorothea,” he said, as his face flushed with anger and anxiety, his voice rising as if by unconscious pressure, “don’t you ever dare dishonour my name! It is the only thing I have. I owe humanity an irreparable debt for it. It invests me not simply with what is known as civic honour, it gives me also the honour I feel and enjoy when I stand in the presence of what I have created. Lie, and you besmirch my name! Lie, and you sully and debase it! I am probably not as much afraid as you think I am of being regarded as a cuckold, though I admit that the thought of it makes my blood boil. But I want to say to you here and now, that when I think of you in the arms of another man I feel within me a deep desire, a real lust for murder. But you would throw me into the last pit of hell and damnation, if you were to repay the truths I have told you and given you with lies, lies, lies. You must not, you dare not, imagine for a minute that I am so selfish and vulgar as not to be able to understand that a change might come over your heart. But that is one thing; telling a lie and living a lie is quite another. It is impossible for me to live side by side with another human being except in absolute truth. A lie, the lie, crushes what there is in me of the divine. A lie to me is carrion and corruption. Tell me, then, whether you have been and are true to me! Don’t be afraid, Dorothea, and don’t be ashamed. Everything may be right yet and work out as it should. But tell me: Have you been deceiving me?”

“I—deceiving you?” breathed Dorothea, and looked into his face as if hypnotised, never so much as moving an eyelash. “What do you mean? Deceiving you? Do you really think that I would be capable of such baseness?”

“You have no lover? No other man has touched you since you have been my wife?”

“A lover? Some other man has touched me?” she repeated with that same hypnotic look. In her child-like face there was the glow of unadulterated honour and undiluted innocence.

“You have been having no secret rendezvous, you have not been receiving treacherous letters, nor writing them, you have promised no man anything, not even in jest?”

“Ah, well now, Daniel, listen! In jest. That’s another matter. Who knows? You know me, and you know how one talks and laughs.”

“And you assure me that all this mysterious abuse that is being whispered into my ears and to which your conduct has given a certain amount of plausibility is nothing in the world but wickedness on the part of people who know us, nothing but calumny?”

“Yes, Daniel: it is merely wickedness, meanness, and calumny.”

“You are willing that God above should never grant you another minute of peace, if you have been lying to me? Do you wish that, Dorothea?”

Dorothea balked; she blinked a little. Then she said quite softly: “Those are terrible words, Daniel. But if you insist upon it, I am willing to abide by the curse you have made a possibility.”

Daniel breathed a breath of relief. He felt that a mighty load had been taken from his heart. And in grateful emotion he went up to his wife, and pressed her to his bosom.

But at the same time he was repelled by something. He felt that the creature he was pressing to his heart was without rhythm, or vibration, or law, or order. He began again to be gnawed at by torture, this time of a new species and coming from another direction.

As he opened the door to the hall, he heard a rustle; and he saw a dark figure hastening over to the room that opened on the court.

Left alone, Dorothea stared for a while into space, as motionless as a statue. Then she took her violin and bow from the case—she had bought a new bow to take the place of the one that had been broken—and began to play: a cadence, a trill, a waltz. Her face took on a hardened, resolute expression.

She soon let the instrument fall from her hands, and began to think. She laid the violin to one side, took off her slippers, sneaked out of the room in her stocking feet and across the hall, and listened at the door to Philippina’s room. She opened it cautiously and heard a sound snoring from Philippina’s bed, which stood next to the door.

The lamp had almost burned down; it gave so little light that the bed clothes could hardly be seen.

She stole up to Philippina’s couch of repose, step by step, without making the slightest noise, bent down, stretched out her arm, groped around over the body of the inexplicable creature who was sleeping there, and was on the point of raising the covers and reaching for Philippina’s breast. Philippina ceased snoring, woke up as if she had been struck in the face by the rays of a magic lantern, opened her eyes, and looked at Dorothea with a speechless threat. Not a muscle of her face moved.

Dorothea collected her thoughts instantly. With the expression on her face of one who has just succeeded in carrying out some good joke, she threw her whole body on Philippina and pressed her face to her cheek, nauseated though she was by the stench of her breath and the bed clothes.

“Listen, Philippina, the American wants to give you something,” she whispered.

“Jesus, you’re punching my belly in,” replied Philippina, and gasped for breath. When Dorothea had straightened up, she said: “Well, has he already given you something? That’s the main thing.”

“He gave me the feathers. Isn’t that something?” replied Dorothea, “and he is going to give me a set of rubies.”

“I wish you already had ’em. It seems to me that your American don’t exactly hail from Givetown. I’ve been told that he ain’t so damn rich after all. When are you goin’ to meet him again, your lover?”

“To-morrow evening, between six and seven. Oh, I am so glad, so glad, Philippina. He is so young.”

“Yes, young! That’s a lot, ain’t it?” murmured Philippina contemptuously.

“He has such a pretty mole on his neck, way down on his neck, down there,” she said, pointing to the same spot on Philippina’s neck. “Right there! Does it tickle you? Does it make you feel good?”

“Don’t laugh so loud, you’ll waken little Gottfried,” said Philippina in a testy, morose tone. “And get out of here! I’m sleepy.”

“Good-night, then, you pesky old dormouse,” said Dorothea, in seemingly good-natured banter, and left the room.

Hardly had she closed the door behind her when Philippina sprang like an enraged demon from her bed, clenched her fist, and hissed: “Damned thief and whore! She wanted to rob me, that’s what she did, the dirty wench! You wait! Your days in this place are numbered. Somebody’s going to squeal, believe me, and when they do, they’ll get you right.”

She drew her red petticoat over her legs, tied it tightly, and went to the door to lock it. The lock had been out of order for some time; she could not budge it. She carried a chair over to the door, placed it directly underneath the lock, folded her arms, sat down on it, and remained sitting there for an hour or so blinking her evil eyes.

When no longer able to keep from going to sleep, she got up, placed the folding table against the door, and got back into bed, murmuring imprecations such as were second nature to her.

VI

The following day began with a heavy rain storm. Daniel had had a restless night; he went to his work quite early. But his head was so heavy that he had to stop every now and then, and rest it on his hand. There was no blood, no swing to his ideas.

Toward eight o’clock the postman came, and asked for Inspector Jordan. The old man had to sign a receipt in acknowledgment of a solemnly sealed money order.

In the letter the postman gave him were two hundred dollars in bills and a note from Benno. The letter had been mailed in Galveston. Benno wrote that he had made inquiries and found that his father was still living. He said he had been quite successful in the New World, and as a proof of his prosperity he was sending him the enclosed sum, with the best of greetings, in payment for the trouble he had cost his father.

It was a cold epistle. But the old man was beside himself with joy. He ran to Daniel and then to Philippina, held the crisp notes in the air, and stammered: “Look, people! He is rich. He has sent me two hundred dollars! He has become an honest man, he has. He remembers his old father, he does! Really this is a great day! A great day, Daniel, because of something else that has just been finished.” He added with a mysterious smile: “A blessed day in the history of a great cause!”

He dressed and went down town; he wanted to tell his friends the news.

Daniel called down to know if his breakfast was ready; nobody answered. Thereupon he went to the kitchen, and got himself a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread. Philippina came in a little later. Her hair looked as though a hurricane had struck it; she was in her worst humour. She snarled at Daniel, asking him why in the name of God he couldn’t wait till the coffee had been boiled.

“Leave me in peace, Philippina,” he said, “I need peace.”

“Peace!” she roared, “peace, the same old story: you want peace!” She threw a wild, contemptuous glance at the open chest containing Daniel’s scores, leaned against the table, put the tips of her dirty fingers on the score he was then studying, and shrieked: “There is the cause of the whole malheur! The whole malheur, I say, comes from this damned note-smearing of yours! The idea of a man settin’ down and dabbing them pot-hooks on good white paper, day after day, year in and year out! What does it all mean? Tell me! While you’re doin’ it, everything else is moving—like a crab, backwards. Jesus, you’re a man, and yet you spend your time at that kind of stuff! I’d be ashamed to admit it.”

Not prepared for this enigmatic outburst of anger and hate, Daniel looked at Philippina utterly dazed. “Get out of here,” he cried indignantly. “Get out of here, I say,” and pointed to the door.

She got out. “The damned dabbery!” she bellowed with reinforced maliciousness.

From ten to twelve, Daniel had to lecture at the conservatory. His heart beat violently, though he was unable to explain his excitement. It was more than a foreboding: he felt as if he had heard a piece of terribly bad news and the real nature of it had slipped his memory.

He did not go home for luncheon; he ate in the cafÉ at the Carthusian Gate. Then he took a long walk out over the fields and meadows. It had stopped raining, and the brisk wind refreshed him. He stood for a long while on the banks of the canal, and watched some men piling bricks at a brick-kiln. From time to time he took a piece of paper from his pocket, and wrote something on it with his pencil: it was notes.

Once he wrote alongside of a motif: “Farewell, my music!” His eyes were filled with dreadful tears.

He returned to the city just as the sun was setting; it looked like a huge ball of fire in the west. The sky shone out between two great black clouds like the forge of a smithy. He could not help but think of Eleanore.

He entered his living room, and paced back and forth. Philippina came in, and asked him whether she should warm up his soup for him. Her unnatural, singing tone attracted his attention; he looked at her very closely.

“Where is my wife?” he asked.

Philippina’s face betrayed an abysmally mean smile, but she never said a word.

“Where is my wife?” he asked a second time, after a pause.

Philippina’s smile became brighter. “Is it cold out?” she asked, and in a moment she had left the room. Daniel stared at her as if he feared she had lost her mind. In a few minutes she came back. In the meantime she had put on a cloak that was much too short for her, and beneath which the loud, freakish skirt of her checkered dress could be seen.

“Daniel, come along with me,” she said in an anxious voice. To Daniel her voice sounded mysterious and fearful. “Come along with me, Daniel! I want to show you something.”

He turned pale, put on his hat, and followed her. They crossed the square in silence, went through Binder Street, Town Hall Street, and across the Market. Daniel stopped. “What are you up to?” he asked with a hoarse voice.

“Come along! You’ll see,” whispered Philippina.

They walked on, crossed the Meat Bridge, went through Kaiser Street and the White Tower to St. James’s Place. Some people looked at the odd couple in amazement. When they reached Frau Hadebusch’s little house, it was dark. “Listen, Philippina, are you ever going to talk?” said Daniel, gritting his teeth.

“Psh!” Philippina knew what she was doing. She put her mouth to Daniel’s ear, and whispered: “Go up two flights, quick, you know the house, bang on the door, and if it’s locked, bust it in. In the meantime I’ll go to Frau Hadebusch so that she can’t interfere.”

Then Daniel understood.

VII

Everything became blood-red before his eyes; he was seized with a feverish chill.

He had followed Philippina with a dejected, limp feeling of disgust, fear and coercion. Now he knew what it was all about. At the very beginning of the events he saw the middle and the end. He saw before the bolted door what was going on behind it. His soul was seized with horror, rage, woe, contempt, and terror. He felt dizzy; he feared lie might lose consciousness.

He sprang up the creaking stairs by leaps and bounds. He stood before the door behind which he had gone hungry, been cold, and glowed with enthusiasm as a young man. Silence should have reigned there now, so that the devotion of retrospective spirits might not be molested on the grave of so many, many hopes.

He jerked at the latch; a scream was heard from within. The door was bolted. He pressed his body against the fragile wood so violently that both hinges, and the latch, gave way, and the door fell on to the middle of the floor with a mighty crash.

The scream was repeated, this time in a more piercing tone. Dorothea was lying on a big bed with nothing on but a flimsy chemise. Frau Hadebusch, pimp always, had rented the bed from a second-hand dealer; it covered a half of the room. Before Dorothea was a plate of cherries; she had been amusing herself by shooting the pits at her lover. He likewise was lacking nearly all the garments ordinarily worn by men when in the presence of women. He was sitting astride on a chair, smoking a short-stemmed pipe.

When Daniel, with bloody hands—he had scratched himself while breaking in the door—with his hair flying wild about his face, panting, and pale as death, stepped over the door, Dorothea again began to scream; she screamed seven or eight times. She was filled with despair and terrible anxiety.

Daniel rushed at the young man, and seized him by the throat. While he held the American in a death-like grip, while he saw Dorothea, as if in a roseate haze, with uplifted arms, leave the bed screaming at the top of her voice, while an extraordinary power of observation, despite his insane rage, came over him, while he watched the cherries as they rolled across the bed and saw the green stems, some of which were withered, showing that the cherries were half rotten, while he felt a taste on his tongue as if he too had eaten cherries—while he saw all these things and had this sensation, he thought to himself without either doubt or relief: “This is the downfall; this is chaos.”

The American—it later became known that he was a wandering artist who had, with an equal amount of nerve and adroitness, worked his way into the private social life of the city—thrust his antagonist back with all his might, and struck up the position of a professional boxer. Daniel, however, gave him no time to strike; he fell on him, wrapped his arms tight about him, threw him to the floor, and was trying to choke him. He groaned, struggled, got his fist loose, struck Daniel in the face, and cried, “You damned fool!” But it was the cry of a whipped man.

Loud noise broke out downstairs. A crowd of people collected on the sidewalk. “Police, police!” shrieked the shrill voice of a woman. The people began to make their way up the stairs.

“Oh, oh, oh!” moaned Dorothea. In half a minute she had her dress on. “Out of this place and away,” she said, as she looked for her gloves and umbrella.

Frau Hadebusch appeared in the hall, wringing her hands. Behind her stood Philippina. Two men forced their way in, ran up to Daniel and the American, and tried to separate them. But they had bitten into each other like two mad dogs; and it was necessary to call for help. A soldier and the milkman gave a hand; and finally two policemen appeared on the scene.

“I must go home,” cried Dorothea, while the other women shrieked and carried on. “I must go home, and get my things and leave.”

With the face of one possessed and at the same time dumb, Philippina stole out from among the excited crowd and followed Dorothea. She did not feel that she was walking; she could not feel the pavement under her feet; she was unconscious of the air. That wild inspiration returned to her which she had experienced once before in her life—the time she went up in the attic and saw Gertrude’s lifeless body hanging from a rafter.

Her veins pulsed with a hot lust for destruction. “Swing the torch!” That was the cry she heard running through her brain. “Swing the torch!” But she wanted to do something much more pretentious this time than merely start a fire in some rubbish. The farther she went the more rapidly she walked. Finally she began to run and sing with a loud, coarse voice. Her cloak was not buttoned; it flew in the air. The people who saw her stopped and looked at her, amazed.

VIII

Herr Carovius and Jordan were sitting in the Paradise CafÉ.

“How things change, and how everything clears up and straightens out!” remarked Jordan.

“Yes, the open graves are gaping again,” said Herr Carovius cynically.

“So far as I am concerned,” continued Jordan, without noticing the aversion his affability had aroused in Herr Carovius, “I can now face death with perfect peace of mind. My mission is ended; my work is done.”

“That sounds as if you had discovered the philosopher’s stone,” remarked Herr Carovius sarcastically.

“Perhaps,” replied Jordan gently and bent over the table. “You are after all not entirely wrong, my honoured friend. Do you wish to be convinced? Will you honour me with a visit?”

Herr Carovius had become curious. They paid their bills and left for Ægydius Place.

Having entered Jordan’s room, the old man lighted a lamp and bolted the door. He then opened the door of the great cabinet by the wall, and took out a big doll. It was dressed like a Swiss maid, had on a flowered skirt, a linen waist, and a little pink apron. Its yellow hair was done up in braids, and on its head was a little felt hat.

“All that is my handiwork,” said Jordan, with much show of pride. “I myself took all the measurements and made the clothes, including even the shoes. And now watch, my dear friend.”

He placed the doll in the middle of the room. “She will speak,” he continued, his face radiant with joy, “she will sing. She will sing a song native to her beloved Tyrol. Will you be so good as to take this chair? I would rather not have you so close to it, if I may, for there are certain noises which I still have to correct. The illusion is stronger when you are some distance away.”

He crouched down behind the doll, did something at its back, and the buzzing of wheels became audible. The old man then stepped out to the front of the doll, and said: “Now, my little girl, let’s hear what you can do!”

An uncanny, hoarse, somewhat cooing voice rang out from the body of the doll. It sounded like the vibrations of metallic strings accompanied by the low tones of a water whistle. If you closed your eyes, you could at least imagine you were hearing a song sung by some one in the distance. But if you looked at the thing closely with its lifeless, mask-like kindly, waxen face, and heard the shrill, muffled sounds, without either articulation or rhythm, coming from within, it took on a ghostly aspect. Herr Carovius in fact felt a cold chill creep down his back.

When the machine ran down, the doll’s eyelids and lips closed. Jordan was looking at Herr Carovius in great suspense. “Well, what do you think of it?” he asked. “Be quite frank; I can stand any amount of criticism.”

Herr Carovius had great difficulty to keep from bursting out laughing. His mouth and chin itched. Suddenly, however, scorn and contempt left him; he fell into a disagreeably serious frame of mind, and a softness, a mildness such as he had not felt since time immemorial stole over his heart. He said: “That is a perfectly splendid invention! Perfectly splendid! Though it does need some improvement.”

Jordan nodded zealously and with joyous approval. He was on the point of going into a detailed description of the mechanism and its artistic construction, when the two men heard a strange noise in the adjoining room. They stopped and listened. They could hear some one moving the furniture; there were steps back and forth; they heard a hammering and pounding as if some one were trying to open a box. This was followed by a sound that resembled the falling of paper on the floor; it lasted for some time, bunch apparently following bunch. Listen! Some one is talking in an abusive voice! What’s that? A gruesome, sing-song voice repeating unintelligible words: “I-oi! huh, huh! I-oi, huh-huh!” There is a sound as if of crackling fire. The flames cannot be seen; but they can be heard!

Old Jordan jerked the door open, and cried like a child.

Philippina was standing in the midst of a pile of burning papers. She had forced Daniel’s trunk open, thrown every one of his scores on the floor, and set them on fire. She was a fearful object to behold. Her hair hung down loose and straggly over her shoulders, she was swinging her arms as if she were working a pump-handle, and from her mouth poured forth a volley of loud, babbling, gurgling tones that bore not the faintest resemblance to anything human. Her face, lightened by the flames, was coloured with the trace of fearful voluptuousness. Herr Carovius and old Jordan stood in the doorway as if paralysed. Seeing them, she began to hop about, and stretched out her upraised arms to the flames, which were leaping higher and higher.

Herr Carovius, awakening from his torpidity, saw that it was high time to make some effort to escape. Shielding his face with his hands, he fled as fast as his feet could carry him to the hall door and down the steps. Tears were gushing down Jordan’s cheeks; fear had made it impossible for him to reflect. He ran back into his room, opened the window, and called out to the people on the square. Then he chanced to think of his beloved doll. He rushed up to it and took it under his arm. But when he tried to leave the room, the smoke blew into his face, benumbing and burning him. He staggered, reached the top of the stairs, made a misstep, fell headlong down the steps, still holding the doll in convulsive embrace, twitched a few times, and then lay lifeless on the hall floor.

Heart failure had put an end to his life.

Dorothea, who had been in the house packing her things, hastened, luggage in hand, past the corpse. Her face was ashen; she never looked at the dead body of Inspector Jordan. She was soon lost in the crowd of excited people. She had vanished.

IX

The police had at last separated Daniel and the American in Frau Hadebusch’s house. Daniel fell on a chair, and gazed stupidly into space. Frau Hadebusch brought him some water. The American put on his clothes, while the spectators looked on and laughed.

The two men were then taken to the police station, where the lieutenant in charge took such depositions as were necessary for court action. Daniel saw a gas lamp, a quill pen, several grinning faces, his own bloody hand, and nothing more. The American was held in order to protect him from further attacks; Daniel was released. He heard the young man tell his story in a mangled German and with a voice that was nearly choked with rage, but did not absorb anything he said.

He heard a dog bark, a wagon rattle, a bell strike; he heard people talking, murmuring, crying; he heard the scraping of feet. But it all sounded to him like noises that were reaching his ears through the walls of a prison. He went on his way; his gait was unsteady.

As he reached the Church of Our Lady, Daniel turned to the right toward the Market Place, and saw the Goose Man standing before him.

“Go home,” the Goose Man seemed to say with a sad voice. “Go home!”

“Who are you? what do you wish of me?” A voice within him asked. But then it seemed that the figure had become invisible, and that it could not be seen again until it was far off in the distance, where it was being shone upon by a bright light.

People were running across Ægydius Place; some of them were crying “Fire!” Daniel turned the corner; he could see his house. Flames were leaping up behind his window. He pressed his hands to his temples, and, with eyes wide open and filled with terror, he forced his way through the crowd up to his house. “For God’s sake, for Heaven’s sake!” he cried, “save my trunk!”

Many looked at him. A figure appeared at the window; many arms were pointed at it. “The woman! Look, look, the woman!” came a cry from the crowd. And then again: “She has set the house on fire! She has swung the torch and started the fire!”

Daniel rushed into his house. Firemen overtook him. There he saw in the hall, lighted by the lanterns being carried back and forth so swiftly, and placed in the corner with no more care or consideration than was possible under such circumstances, the dead body of old Jordan. His body, and close beside it, as if in supernatural mockery of all things human, the doll, the Swiss maid with the machine in her stomach. Sighing and sobbing, he fell down; his forehead touched the dead hand of the old man.

As if in a dream he heard the hissing of the hoses, the commands, the hurried running back and forth of the firemen. Then he felt as if a shadow, a figure from the lower world, suddenly rose before him. A clenched fist, he thought, opened and hurled shreds of paper into his face. When he looked up he could see nothing but the firemen rushing around him. The shadow, the figure, had pushed its way in among them, and in the confusion no one had paid any attention to it.

With an absent-minded gesture, Daniel reached out and picked up the paper that was lying nearest him. It had fallen on the face of the doll. He unfolded it and saw, written in his own hand, the music to the “Harzreise im Winter.” Under the notes were the words:

The melody and rhythm that interpreted the words were of a grandiose gloominess, like a song of shades pursued in the night, across the sea. Daniel recalled the hour he had written this music; he recalled the expression on Gertrude’s face the time he played it for her. Eleanore was there, too, wearing a white dress, with a myrtle wreath in her hair. The tones dissolved the web of infinite time. “But aside, who is it?” came forth like a great, deep dirge. In the question there was something prophetically great. He covered his face and wept; he felt as if his heart would break.

The dead man and the doll were lying there, motionless, lifeless.

In half an hour the fire was under control. The two attic rooms had been burned out completely. Further than this no damage had been done.

Philippina had vanished without a trace. Since no one had seen her leave the house, the first theory was that she had been burned to death. But investigation proved this assumption to be incorrect. The police looked for her everywhere, but in vain; she was not to be found. A few people who had known her rather intimately insisted that she had been burned up so completely that there was nothing left of her but a little pile of black ashes.

However this may be, and whatever the truth may be, Philippina never again entered the house. No one ever again saw or heard a thing of her.