He staggered a little back and forth, as if he had been drinking too much, and he wondered how that could be.
At last he could no longer see the people or houses—only water, sky, and sand.
It seemed to have been his intention; for, weak and limp, he went and lay down in the loose sand, and fell into a drowse.
XIII
Such drowsing is not real sleep, neither does it refresh. When Johannes awoke after a quarter of an hour, his throat was parched, and he felt as if his heart were shriveled in his breast. He essayed to think over what had happened, but it was too bitter and too frightful. He looked at the imprinted sand where he had been lying, as if he would go to sleep again. But now he could not sleep, and must stay awake.
He sat up and stared at the sea, and then again at the dunes. What was it that had befallen him? A very long time—he knew not himself how long—he sat looking. Then he stood up, feeling stiff and sluggish, as if dead tired from a long journey. Slowly and aimlessly he dragged himself into the dunes, and tried to take an interest in the beetles and the flowers. Sometimes, from force of habit, he succeeded; but immediately there returned the shudderings which that cruel blow had caused.
It had never entered his head that he himself would marry his friend. Why, then, should it go to his heart as if he were flung aside and trampled upon, now that another was about to take the place of her husband?
"It must not—must not be!" was all he could say. He very well knew that the world did not always concern itself with his thoughts, and that his day-life was conducted quite differently from his night-life where everything proceeded from his will and wish. But this was so squarely against his desires and ideas that it seemed to him as if the world must care about it.
Naturally, the world continued not to mind anything about it, because the world is a far greater and stronger thought than that of Little Johannes.