“The old room no longer exists,” he said. “It is nothing more than an image, a monument ... my fancy, which father humored me in.”
She turned her face away and listened.
“But had I lived in the days of the old room,” he said, “then it would certainly have captured me and held me captive.”
“Yes ... you have been talking to father,” she said, softly.
“Yes.”
Then he lay down before her, with his cheek on her hand, as he so often did:
“Yes,” he repeated. “And ... mother ... I love you. You are so pretty. But we will not talk about the old room ... ever. For I think it is the most wonderful ... and the most beautiful and the strongest thing I know of.... But it hurts me that I am not wholly your son ... or father’s either, that I might devote myself to one of you in sharing your strongest feelings. And I cannot talk to father about it ... neither can we two, can we?”
Fru Adelheid did not answer him, but stroked his hair with her hand. Neither of them spoke and it was quite silent in the room.
In the silence she became herself again. The many moulded years came to their own again and the bells rang monotonously and ever more strongly from out of the noise of the world, which had drowned them.
She marvelled at the excitement into which the old room had thrown her. Quenched was the love which had made her its mistress and quenched the red desire which made it too narrow. She thought of Cordt, who had fought, she considered, for what was not worth fighting for. Sorrowfully she looked at her tall, silent boy, whose weary thoughts kept pace so well with her own.