"Saint Peter resisted for a long while, but the poor soul gave him no peace, and at last he said: 'Well, you may go, for all I care; but you'll be sorry for it.'
"And so the poor soul returned to the earth, in order to see her beloved Paul. And when she got there, and saw him feasting and enjoying himself with others, she quietly went back to eternity and, shaking her head sadly, said: 'Now I'll return to hell and repent.' And then Saint Peter said to her: 'The hundred years you promised are forgiven you. During the one minute you passed on earth, you suffered more than you would have done in a hundred years of hell.'
"And that's the story of the poor soul."
I thirst for some spring outside of me, which would refresh and redeem me. I long for music, for faith, for some soul-liberating dedication of myself! I find it not. I must seek the spring within myself.
In deepest grief it often seems to me as if it were not I who have suffered thus. I go my way, and it seems as if some one were telling me the story of what had happened to another.
For the first time in my life, I know what it is to feel that I am being borne with and favored. I really ought not to be here. I am eating the bread of charity. Now I know how the poor homeless ones must feel. If Hansei cared to do so, he could send me out of his house this very day, and what would become of me then?