"You see now, one cannot trust in the permanence of this hatred."
"No, one must trust love."
"It looks as if that had conquered."
Their parting at the station was heart-rending, and, as he sat alone in the railway carriage, he felt the pain of longing for her. He did not find the sense of freedom and happiness of which he had dreamt. All the recollections of her malice seemed to have been obliterated.
[1] Heligoland.
IV
He went from London to Hamburg in the hope of finding acquaintances on his arrival who would help him on to Rügen. But he found the place as though under a spell of enchantment; everyone had gone to the country or somewhere else. He had to take a room in an hotel and telegraph first to Ilmarinen in Rügen, but the latter answered that he had no money. Then he telegraphed to Copenhagen and Christiania and received similar answers.
He felt now as though he had been enticed into a trap and overpowered. Since there had been an outbreak of cholera the previous year in Hamburg, they expected another when the heat returned, and that was the case just now. Therefore, if he did not get away soon, he had to expect, not death, to which he felt indifferent, but the quarantine.
The days passed slowly with terrible monotony, for he had no one to talk to, and with the threatened cholera outbreak hanging over his head. Helpless and in a perpetual rage against some invisible foe who seemed to have a grudge against him, he felt paralysed. He dared not move a finger in order to alter his destiny, for he feared failure and renewed disappointment of his hopes.