“And I?” he asked.
“You—what of you?” she cried. Then she became sad. “I have little perverse feelings,” she lamented.
“And I can’t bear to compel anything, for fear of hurting it. So I’m always pushed this way and that, like a fool.”
“You don’t know how you hurt me, talking so,” she said.
He kissed her. After a moment he said:
“You are not like other folk. ‘Ihr Lascheks seid ein anderes Geschlecht.’ I thought of you when we read it.”
“Would you rather have me more like the rest, or more unlike, Siegmund? Which is it?”
“Neither,” he said. “You are you.”
They were quiet for a space. The only movement in the night was the faint gambolling of starlight on the water. The last person had passed in black silhouette between them and the sea.
He was thinking bitterly. She seemed to goad him deeper and deeper into life. He had a sense of despair, a preference of death. The German she read with him—she loved its loose and violent romance—came back to his mind: “Der Tod geht einem zur Seite, fast sichtbarlich, und jagt einem immer tiefer ins Leben.”