Heinrich continued: "Yes, it's an awful business, even though I wasn't on very intimate terms with him during the last months it is indescribably awful, and goes on being so."
"I can quite understand," said George, "not making any headway with one's work under circumstances like that."
"Yes," answered Heinrich hesitatingly. "But it's not that alone. To be quite frank that business plays a comparatively subordinate part in my present mental condition. I don't want to make myself out better than I am. Better...! Should I be better...!" He gave a short laugh and then went on speaking. "Look here, yesterday I still thought that it was the accumulation of every possible misfortune that depressed me so. But to-day I've had an infallible proof that things of no importance at all, positively silly things in fact, affect me more deeply than very real things like my father's illness. Disgusting, isn't it?"
George looked in front of him. Why do I still go on walking with him, he thought, and why does he take it quite for granted that I should?
Heinrich went on speaking with clenched teeth and unnecessary vehemence of tone. "I received two letters this afternoon. Two letters, yes ... one from my mother, who had visited my father yesterday in the home. This letter contained the news that he is bad—very bad; to come to the point he won't last much longer"—he gave a deep breath—"and as you can imagine that involves all kinds of troubles, responsibilities for my mother and my sister and for myself. But just think of it, another letter came at the same time as that one; it contained nothing of importance so to speak—a letter from a person with whom I have been intimate for two years—and there was a passage in that letter which struck me as a little suspicious—one isolated passage ... otherwise the letter was very affectionate and very nice, like all her other letters ... and now, just imagine, the memory of that one suspicious passage, which another man wouldn't have noticed at all, has been haunting me and torturing me the whole day. I've not been thinking about my father in the lunatic asylum, nor about my mother and sister who are in despair, but only about that unimportant passage in that silly letter from a really by no means brilliant female. It eats up all my strength, it makes me incapable of feeling like a son, like a human being ... isn't it ghastly?"
George listened coldly. It struck him as strange that this taciturn melancholy man should suddenly confide in so casual an acquaintance as himself, and he could not help feeling a painful sense of embarrassment when confronted with this unexpected revelation. He did not have the impression either that any particular sympathy for him on Heinrich's part was the real reason for all these confessions. He rather felt inclined to put it down to a want of tact, a certain natural lack of self-control, something which seemed very well described by the expression "bad breeding," which he had once heard applied to Heinrich—wasn't it by Hofrat Wilt? They went as far as the Burg gate. A starless sky lay over the silent town, there was a slight rustle in the trees of the park, they could hear somewhere or other the noise of a rolling carriage as it drove away into the distance.
As Heinrich was silent again, George stood still and said in as kind a tone as he could: "I must now really say good-bye, dear Herr Bermann."
"Oh," exclaimed Heinrich, "I now see that you've come with me quite a long way—and I've been tactless enough to tell you, or rather myself in your presence, a lot of things which can't interest you in the least.... Forgive me!"
"What is there to forgive?" answered George gently. He felt a little moved by this self-reproach of Heinrich's and held out his hand.
Heinrich took it, said "Good-bye, my dear Baron," and rushed off in a hurry, as though he had suddenly decided that any further word would be bound to be importunate.