"But," added George, with a weak attempt at humour, "you are earnestly requested not to think of the angel boy."
Heinrich shook his head seriously. "Thank you. You can dedicate the fable of the blue boy to Nürnberger."
"He's turned out right, once again," said George.
"He always turns out right, my dear George. One can positively never be deceived if one mistrusts everything in the world, even one's own scepticism. Even if you had married Anna he would have turned out right ... or at any rate you would have thought so. But at any rate I think ... you don't mind my saying so, I suppose ... it's sound that it's turned out like this."
"Sound? I've no doubt it is for me," replied George with intentional sharpness, as though he were very far from having any idea of sparing his conduct. "It was perhaps even a duty, in your sense of the term, Heinrich, which I owed to myself to bring it to an end."
"Then it was certainly equally your duty to Anna," said Heinrich.
"That remains to be seen. Who knows if I have not spoilt her life?"
"Her life? Do you still remember Leo Golowski saying about her that she was fated to finish up in respectable life? Do you think, George, that a marriage with you would have been particularly respectable? Anna was perhaps cut out to be your mistress—not your wife. Who knows if the fellow she is going to marry one day or other wouldn't really have every reason to be grateful to you if only men weren't so confoundedly silly? People only have pure memories when they have lived through something—this applies to women quite as much as men."
They walked further along the Sommerhaidenweg in the direction of the town, which towered out of the grey haze, and approached the cemetery.
"Is there really any point," asked George hesitatingly, "in visiting the grave of a creature that has never lived?"