“He exaggerates,” thought Anne, and repressed what came to her lips. She thought of her grandfather who had built so much. And this young man?... His words demolished whatever they touched.
“You exaggerate,” she said aloud. “I was taught that old age and those who were before us ought to be respected.”
“That is not true,” said Adam Walter with warmth. “I hate every former age because it stands in the way of my own. The past is a millstone round our necks. The future is a wing. I want to fly!”
Anne followed his words bewildered. What she heard attracted and repelled her. From her childhood, whenever anything came to her mind which conflicted with her respect for men and things, she pushed it aside as if she had seen something wicked. And this stranger bluntly put into words what she too had felt, vaguely and timidly.
Adam Walter spoke of his plans. He would go abroad, to Weimar. He would write his sonatas, his grand opera.
“What has been done up to now is nothing. What has been made is bad, because it was made. One must create. Like God. Just like Him. Even the clay has to be created anew.... Is it not so? The artist must become God, otherwise let us become linen-merchants.”
His restless eyes shone quaintly. Anne remembered suddenly two distant feverish eyes and a word that recalled the word “Youth.” All at once she felt herself freer. She turned to Adam Walter. But the young man’s thoughts must have wandered to another subject, for he drew his low forehead furiously into wrinkles.
“Do you know that my father is ashamed of my mother’s art? And yet how she sings when we are alone, she and I! When nobody hears her. My father hides that lovely, imperishable voice behind his linens. And this is your middle-class society. It only values what can be measured by the yard and by the pound. These things hurt sorely.”
He looked up anxiously. “Did you say anything? No? I beg of you to imagine she simply hides her voice. But perhaps you may not know. My mother was a singer.”
Anne was embarrassed. Hitherto she had thought that was something to be ashamed of.