“What can I do?” That was the question she put to herself day and night. “I can no longer be of any help to my husband; to stand in his way merely because of the child is not right.” Such was the trend of her argument. She saw how he was suffering, how Eleanore was suffering, how each was suffering on account of the other, and how both were suffering because of the despicable vulgarity of the human race. She thought to herself that if she were not living, everything would be right. She imagined, indeed she was certain, that all the truth he had given her had had the sole purpose of whitewashing a lie, by which she was to be made to believe that her existence was a necessity to him. She was convinced that the weight of this lie was crushing the very life out of him. She wished to free him from it and its consequences. But how she was to do this she did not know. She knew that if Daniel and Eleanore could belong to each other in a legal, legitimate way, they would be vindicated in the eyes of God and man. But how this was to be brought about she did not know.
She sought and sought for a way out. Her ideas were vague but persistent. She felt that she was running around in a circle, unable to do more than stare at the centre of the circle. Every morning at five o’clock she would get up and go to church. She prayed with a devotion and passion that physically exhausted her heart.
One morning she knelt before the altar in unusually heart-rending despair. She thought she heard a small voice crying out to her and telling her to take her life.
She swooned; people rushed up to her, and wet her forehead with cold water. This enabled her to get up and go home. A peculiarly sorrowful and dreamy expression lay on her face.
She wanted to do some knitting, for she recalled that when she was a girl she was always able to dispel care and grief by knitting. But every stitch she made turned into the cry: “You must take your life.”
She knelt down by the cradle of little Agnes, but the child said to her only too distinctly: “Mother, you must take your life.”
Eleanore came in. On her brow was the light of enjoyed happiness; her whole body was happiness; her lips trembled and twitched with happiness. But her eyes said. “Sister, you must take your life.”
Philippina stood by the kitchen stove, and whispered to the coals: “Gertrude, you must take your life.” Her father came in, got his dinner, expressed his thanks for it, and went out murmuring, “Daughter, you must take your life; believe me, it will be for the best.”
If she passed by the well, something drew her to the edge; voices called to her from the depths. From every beaker she put to her lips to drink shone forth her image as if from beyond the tomb. On Sunday she climbed up the Vestner Tower, and let her eyes roam over the plains below as if in the grief of departure. She leaned forward out of the little window with a feeling of assuaging horror. The keeper, seeing what she was doing, rushed up, seized her arms, and made her get back.