"What an idea, George! Just go quietly home. What more am I to ask you to do? And remember me to Anna, and tell her how sorry I am.... Well, you know that.... Ah, here we are. You don't mind my keeping you a few seconds more before I...." He stood silently there. He then began again, and his features became distorted. "I'll tell you something, George. It's like this. It's a great happiness that at certain times one doesn't know what has really happened to one. If one immediately realised the awfulness of moments like this, you know, to the extent one realises them afterwards in one's memory, or realises them before in anticipation—one would go mad. Even you, George—yes, even you. And many do really go mad. Those are probably the people who are granted the gift of realising straight away.... My mistress has drowned herself, do you see? That's all one can say. Has the same kind of thing really happened to any one else before? Oh no. Of course you think that you have read or heard of something similar. It is not true. To-day is the first time—the first time since the world's been in existence—that anything like this has ever happened."
The door opened and closed again. George was alone in the street. His head was dazed, his heart oppressed. He went a few steps, then took a fly and drove home. He saw the dead woman in front of him, just as she had stood in front of the stage door on that bright summer day in her red blouse and short white skirt, with the roving eyes beneath the reddish hair. He would have sworn at the time that she had a liaison with the comedy actor who looked like Guido. Perhaps that really was the case. That might be one kind of love and what she felt for Heinrich another. Really there were far too few words. You go to your death for one man, you go to bed with another—perhaps the very night before you drown yourself for the first. And what, after all, does a suicide really mean? Only perhaps that at some moment or other one has failed to appreciate death. How many tried again if they had failed once? The conversation with Grace came into his mind, that hot-and-cold conversation by Labinski's grave on the sunny February day in the thawing snow.
She had confessed to him then that she had not felt any fear or horror when she had found Labinski shot in front of the door of her flat. And when her little sister had died many years ago she had watched the whole night by the death-bed without feeling even a trace of what other people called horror. But, so she told George, she had learned to feel in men's embraces something that might be rather like that feeling. At first the thing had puzzled her acutely, subsequently she thought she could understand it, but according to what the doctors said she was doomed to barrenness, and that must be the reason why it came about that the moment of supreme delight, which was rendered as it were pointless by this fate, plunged her in terror and apprehension. This had struck George at the time as a piece of affectation. To-day he felt a breath of truth in it for the first time. She had been a strange creature. Would he ever meet again a person of a similar type? Why not? Quite soon, as a matter of fact. A new epoch in his life was now beginning and the next adventure was perhaps waiting for him somewhere or other. Adventure...? Had he a right still to think about such things?... Were not, from to-day onwards, his responsibilities more serious than they had ever been? Did he not love Anna more than he had ever done before? The child was dead, but the next one would live.... Heinrich had spoken the truth: Anna was simply cut out to be a mother. A mother.... But he thought with a shiver: Was she cut out at the same time to be the mother of my children? The fly stopped. George got out and went up the two storeys to his apartment. Felician was not yet home. Who knows when he will come? thought George. I can't wait for him, I'm too tired. He undressed quickly, sank into bed, and a deep sleep enveloped him.
When he woke up his eyes tried to find through the window a white line between field and forest, the Sommerhaidenweg which he had been accustomed to look at for some days. But he only saw the bluish empty sky which a tower was piercing, and suddenly realised that he was at home, and all that he had lived through yesterday came into his mind. Yet he felt fresh and alert in mind and body, and it seemed to him as though apart from the calamity which had befallen him there was a piece of good fortune which he had to remember. Oh yes, the Detmold telegram.... Was it really so lucky? He had not thought so yesterday evening.
There was a knock at his door. Felician came into the room with his hat and stick in his hand. "I didn't know that you slept at home last night," he said. "Glad to see you. Well, what's the news out there?"
George rested his arm on the pillow and looked up towards his brother. "It's over," he said; "a boy, but dead," and he looked straight in front of him.
"Not really," said Felician with emotion, came up to him and instinctively put his hand upon his brother's head. He then put hat and stick on one side and sat down on the bed by him, and George could not help thinking of the morning hours of the years of his childhood, when he had often seen his father sitting like that on the edge of the bed when he woke up. He explained to Felician how it had all happened, laying especial stress on Anna's patience and gentleness; but he felt with a certain sense of misgiving that he had to force himself a bit to keep the tone of seriousness and depression which was appropriate to his news. Felician listened sympathetically, then got up and walked up and down the room. Then George got up, began to dress and told his brother of the remarkable developments of the rest of the evening. He spoke about his walks and drives with Heinrich Bermann and of the strange way in which they had learned at last of the actress's suicide.
"Oh, that's the one," said Felician. "It's already in the papers, you know."
"Well, what happened?" asked George curiously.
"She rowed out into the lake and slipped into the water out of the boat.... Well, you can read it.... I suppose you're now going straight out into the country again?" he added.