Eleanore, whose cheeks had turned pale, began to tell her story: “Yesterday afternoon, Father took advantage of the beautiful weather, and went on a walk for the first time in a long while. During his absence, I went to his room to straighten it up a little. I noticed that the door to the large cabinet was not closed as usual, but was standing ajar. He probably forgot to lock it. I did not suspect anything, and knew that there was no harm in what I was going to do, so I opened the door, and what did I see? A big doll, about the size of a four-year-old child, a wax figure with big eyes and long, yellow hair. But there were no clothes on it: the lower part of the back and the front from the neck to the legs had been removed. Inside, there where a person’s heart and entrails are, was a network of wheels and screws and little tubes and wires, all made of real metal.”
“That is strange, really strange. Well?”
“He is making something,” continued Eleanore, “that much is clear. But if I could tell you how I felt when I saw the thing! I never felt so sad in my life. I have shown him so little love, just as Fate has been so unlovely to him. And everything—the air and the light and the people and how one feels towards the people and how they feel towards you, all seemed to me to be so hopelessly without love that I could not help it: I just sat down before that doll and cried. The poor man! The poor old man!”
“Strange, really strange,” repeated Daniel.
After a while, as if conscious of his guilt, he took a seat by the table. Eleanore however got up, went to the window, and leaned her forehead against the glass.
“Come here to me, Eleanore,” said Daniel in a changed tone of voice.
She came. He took her hand and looked into her face. “How in the world have you been keeping the house going all this time?” he asked, viewing the situation in the light of his guilty conscience.
Eleanore let her eyes fall to the floor. “I have done my writing, and I have had considerable success with the flowers. I have even been able to save a little money. Don’t look at me like that, Daniel. It was nothing wonderful I did; you have no reason to feel especially grateful to me.”
He drew her down on his knees, and threw his arms around her shoulders. “You probably think I have forgotten you,” he said sorrowfully, and looked up, “that I have forgotten my Eleanore. Forget my Eleanore? My spirit sister? No, no, dear heart, you have known for a long while that we have begun our common pilgrimage—for life, for death.”
Eleanore lay in his arms; her face was perfectly white; her body was rigid; her eyes were closed.