Eleanore still made the bouquets, and still received the fancy price for them from the unknown purchaser. But she did not attend to her flowers in Daniel’s presence, or even near him; she did this in the old room up next to the roof.
Her father would sit by her, and look at her thoughtfully. She had the feeling that he knew of everything that had taken place between her and Gertrude and Daniel, but, out of infinite delicacy and modesty, and also in grief and pain, had never said a word about it. For previous to her marriage with Daniel, he had never been with her; he had never sat and looked at her so attentively; he had always passed by her in great haste, and had always shown an inclination to be alone.
She had the feeling that he knew a great deal in general about men and things, but rarely said anything because of his superior sense of gentleness and compassion.
Daniel lived about as he did before the wedding. He would sit at the table until late at night and write. It often happened that Eleanore would find him sitting there with his pen in his hand, sound asleep, when she got up early in the morning. She always smiled when this took place, and wakened him by kissing him on the forehead.
He wrote the notes direct from his memory, from his head, just as other people write letters. He no longer needed an instrument to try what he had composed or to give him an inspiration for a new theme.
Once he showed Eleanore eighteen variations of the same melody. He had spent the whole night making changes in a single composition. Eleanore’s heart was heavy: she came very nearly asking, “For whom, Daniel? For what? The trunk up in the attic?”
She slowly began to perceive that it is not brooding reason that climbs and conquers the steps of perfection, but moral will. Like a flash of lightning she recognised one day the demoniacal element in this impulse, an impulse she had been accustomed to ascribe to his everlasting fidgeting, fumbling, and grumbling. She shuddered at the hitherto unsuspected distress of the man, and took pity on him: he was burying himself in darkness in order to give the world more light.
The world? What did it know about the creations of her Daniel! The big trunk was full of opus upon opus, and not a soul troubled itself about all these musical treasures resting in a single coffin.
There was something wrong here, she thought. There must be a lost or broken wheel in the clock-work of time; there was some disease among men; some poison, some evil, some heinous oversight.