“Have you any bills to settle?” he asked, looking partly at Eleanore, partly at Gertrude, and striking his wallet, then bulging with notes. “It’s Court Councillor’s money,” he said, “real Court Councillor’s money. How beautiful it looks, lousy fine, eh? And upon that stuff the salvation of my soul depends!” He threw the money on Gertrude’s bed, stuck out his tongue, and turned away in disgust.
Eleanore handed him the glass of Tokay; her eyes glistened with tears.
“No, Eleanore,” he said, “I have trifled it away. In my arrogance I imagined I could do something; I thought I could get somewhere. I sit down, brood over my ideas, and find that they are all wind-eggs. I have the feeling that I have taken a false oath. What good am I, Eleanore, what good am I, Gertrude?”
“Ah, take a drink, and perhaps your troubles will leave you,” said Eleanore, and stroked his brow with her hand.
Gertrude called out to her: “Quit that! Put that glass away!” She spoke so harshly that Eleanore sprang back, and Daniel got up.
“Leave me alone for a while,” she said. Daniel and Eleanore left the room.
Eleanore went into the living room, sat down at the table, and laid her head in her hands. “What can we do now?” she said to Daniel. The violin tone in her voice had something unusually touching about it.
Daniel set the candle he was carrying in the bay window. He bent down over the table, and took Eleanore by her small wrists. “Accept the bitter for the sake of the sweet,” he murmured. “Believe in me, believe in yourself, believe in the higher law. It is not possible that I merely imagined that there is a winged creature for me. I must have something to cling to, something indestructible, ah, even superhuman.”
“You must have something superhuman to cling to,” Eleanore repeated after him. She could not help but think that he had already made superhuman demands of the other woman, his wife, her sister, Gertrude. She raised her finger as if to warn him: it was a gesture of infinite timidity.
But Daniel scarcely saw what she had done. In his arrogant presumption and passion he could have smashed the universe to pieces, and then re-created it merely in order to mould this one creature after his own desires. He would have made her of boundless pliability, and yet active in her love for him; he would have had her spurn venerable commandments in a spirit of self-glorification, and yet cherish unequivocal confidence in him, the creature of need and defiance; and she would be cheerful withal.