“You don’t know her? Why, she is the sister of Frau Feistelmann. You must help me,” she said, turning to Benda, “for you must know all about this kind of things. There where you have been ostriches must be as thick as chickens here at home.” Laughing, she went out, and returned in due time with a big box, from which, cautiously and with evident delight, she took two big feathers, one white, one black. Holding them by the stem, she laid them across her hair, stepped up to the mirror, and looked at herself with an intoxicated mien.
In this mien there was something so extraordinary, indeed uncanny, that Benda could not help but cast a horrified glance at Daniel.
“This is the first time I ever knew what a mirror was,” he said to himself.
III
That evening Daniel visited Benda in his home. Benda showed him some armour and implements he had brought back with him from Africa. In explaining some of the more unusual objects, he described at length the customs of the African blacks.
Then he was seized with a headache, sat down in his easy chair, and was silent for a long while. He suddenly looked like an old man. The ravages his health had suffered while in the tropics became visible.
“Did you ever see Dorothea’s mother?” he asked, by way of breaking the long silence.
Daniel shook his head: “It is said that she is vegetating, a mere shadow of her former self, in some kind of an institution in Erlangen,” he replied.
“I have been told that neither Andreas Döderlein nor his daughter has ever, in all these years, taken the slightest interest in the unfortunate woman,” continued Benda. “Well, as to Andreas Döderlein, I have always known what to expect of him.”
Daniel looked up. “You hinted once that Döderlein was guilty of reprehensible conduct with regard to his wife. Do you recall? Is that in any way connected with Dorothea and her life? Do you care to discuss the matter?”