"I have played you no trick. This is a thing that must be done. We shall have no peace till we leave this place. I will stay here no longer. I want to be mistress of a hotel. You will see that I can earn in a year three times as much as you with your barrel-organs."
"Do you think you can force me to it?"
"If I could, you would have reason to thank me. You seem quite unable to help yourself out of your old ruts."
"I am not; I am out of them already," he said in a hollow voice, as he hastily put on his coat and left the house.
Annele ran a few steps after him.
"Where are you going, Lenz?"
He made no answer, but kept steadily on up the mountain.
Arrived at the highest point he turned and looked behind him. There lay his old homestead, stripped of its shelter of trees, naked and bare as he felt his own life to be. He turned away and hurried on. Abroad, abroad into strange lands he would go, and never come back till all in himself and in the world was changed.
He ran on and on, an almost irresistible impulse all the while tempting him back. He sat down at last on the stump of a tree, and covered his face with his hands. It was a still, soft afternoon of late autumn, when the sun's beams still fell kindly on the earth, especially on the Morgenhalde, and spread lovingly over the fallen trees they had so long nourished. The voices of the magpies were heard busily chattering in the chestnut-tree below, mixed with the frequent chirp of the nutpecker. In Lenz's heart was the blackness of death. "Man, help me up with this!" suddenly cried a child's voice. He rose and helped Faller's eldest daughter lift upon her back the bundle of chips she had been gathering among the fallen trees. The child was terrified at his wild looks, so like a murderer or a ghost as she thought, and hurried down the hill. He stood long watching the retreating figure.
It was night before Lenz returned home. He spoke not a word, but sat for an hour staring blankly on the ground. When he looked up, it was only to turn a wondering gaze on the tools hanging about the walls and suspended from the ceiling, as if questioning in his mind what they all were, and what they were used for.