When he got on the steamer for Christiania, he wrote a farewell letter to the captain, went on deck with his revolver, and thought of finding his grave in the Kattegat. Why did he not carry out this intention? Let him say who can! At last he found himself in a small provincial hotel. But why had it to be precisely the one in which Lais's friends and relations lived and dominated the social circle in which he must move? He could only regard that as a mean stroke on the part of Destiny, for on this occasion he was not to blame at all.
Meanwhile he sat as on an ant-heap in an alien and hostile environment. For three days long he asked himself: "What have I got to do here?" And he answered: "What indeed have you to do anywhere?" So he remained. For three days he asked himself: "What have you to do in life?" and questioned of the where, whence and whither. As an answer, the revolver lay on the table.
Hamburg, London, and Rügen began to shine like pleasant memories in comparison with this place of exile. It was so dreadful that he was astonished at the inventiveness of Destiny in devising new tortures which ever increased in severity. His room in the hotel was a suicide's room, i.e. a combination of discomfort and uncanniness. He was again haunted by the old idea he used to have: "I shall not get alive out of this room; here I must end my days." His capacity for hoping was exhausted. He seemed to be dropping downwards towards the empty void which began to close round him like the last darkness.
On the fourth day he received a letter from his sister-in-law in which she told him that his little wife was going on well. At the same time she proposed that he and his wife should spend the winter in a little town in Alster, so that her relations could now and then visit his wife who, in her present condition, needed help and advice.
It was, then, not at an end! And these pains of death had been endured in vain; he had not needed them in order to be taught to miss his wife. It was not over yet, and he began to live again.
As a proof that he had completely come to the end of himself it may be mentioned that the papers in those days contained a notice of his death. He wrote to contradict this in a vein of gloomy irony. He was tormented for three days more by having to run about to collect the journey money.
When the train at last stopped at the little station, he saw first of all his wife's pale face. It looked certainly somewhat exhausted by suffering, but beamed at the same time with some of that glorifying radiance which motherhood bestows. When her eyes discovered him, her face lit up.
"She loves me," he said to himself. And he began to live again literally not figuratively.
"Are you well?" he asked almost shyly.
"Yes I am," she whispered, burying like a child her face in his great cloak and kissing the edge of it.