It frequently happened that Daniel would not answer when any one asked him a question. His ear lost the words, his eye the pictures, signs, faces, gestures. He was in his own way; he was a torment to himself.
Something drew him there and then here. He would leave the house, and then be taken with a longing to return. He noticed that people were laughing at him; laughing at him behind his back. He read mockery in the eyes of his pupils; the maids in the house tittered when he passed by.
What did they know? What were they concealing? Perhaps his soul could have told what they knew and what they concealed; but he was unwilling to drag it all out into the realm of known, nameable things.
As if an invisible slanderer were at his side, unwilling to leave him, leave him in peace, his despair increased. “What have you done, Daniel!” a voice within him cried, “what have you done!” The shades of the sisters, arm in arm, arose before him.
The feeling of having made a mistake, a mistake that could never be rectified, burned like fire within him. His work, so nearly completed, had suddenly died away.
For the sake of his symphony, he forced himself into a quiet frame of mind at night, made room for faint-hearted hopes, and lulled his presentient soul into peace.
The thing that troubled him worst of all was the way Philippina looked at him.
Since the birth of the child he had been living in Eleanore’s room. Old Jordan was consideration itself: he went around in his stocking feet so as not to disturb him.
One night Daniel took the candle, and went downstairs to Dorothea’s room. She woke up, screamed, looked at him bewildered, recognised him, became indignant, and then laughed mockingly and sensually.
He sat down on the side of her bed, and took her right hand between his two. But he had a disagreeable sensation on feeling her hand in his, and looked at her fingers. They were not finely formed: they were thicker at the ends than in the middle; they could not remain quiet; they twitched constantly.