"God knows."
"Annele! Is it true that we were once so happy together?"
"I suppose it must be."
"And can we never be again?"
"I do not know."
"Why do you answer me so?"
"Because you ask me such questions."
Lenz buried his face in his hands, and remained in that attitude through almost the entire night.
He tried to make out how and why things had come to this extremity; why to his other misfortunes this so horrible one was added. He could not explain it. He lived over every moment from the first day to this night, and still could not explain it. "I cannot make it out! I cannot make it out!" he cried. "If a voice would but come down from heaven and tell me!" But there came no voice from heaven. All was still save the monotonous ticking of the clocks.
He stood at the window, gazing out. The night was still; no living thing stirred. Only snow-clouds were chasing each other across the sky. All night long, a lamp burned at the blacksmith's on the neighboring mountain. The smith had died that day. "Why was he allowed to die and not I? I would so gladly be dead." Life and death drove in wild confusion through his brain; the living were not alive; the dead were not dead; life is but one great horror; no bird ever sang; no human being ever made melody. The whole world is waste and void as it was before the creation. All is chaos....