But Christian had no answer. His world and his mother’s world—he saw no bridge between the two. And as the knowledge came to him, another matter also became clear. And it was this, that there was likewise no bridge between the world of his conscious life and another that lay far behind it, misty and menacing, luring and terrible at once, which he did not understand, nor know, of which he had not even a definite presage, but which had come to him only as a vision through flashes of lightning, or as a dream or in a swift touch of horror.
He kissed his mother’s hand, and hastened out.
XI
In spite of a gently persistent rain, he walked with Letitia through the twilit park. Many times they wandered up and down the path from the hot-houses to the pavillion, and heard the sound of a piano from the house. Fräulein von Einsiedel was playing.
At first their conversation was marked by long pauses. Something in Letitia was beseeching: Take me, take me! Christian understood. He wore his arrogant smile, but he did not dare to look at her. “I love music heard from afar,” Letitia said. “Don’t you, Christian?”
He drew his raincoat tighter about him, and replied: “I care little about music.”
“Then you have a bad heart, or at least a hard one.”
“It may be that I have a bad heart; it is certainly hard.”
Letitia flushed, and asked: “What do you love? I mean what things. What?” The archness of her expression did not entirely conceal the seriousness of her question.
“What things I love?” he repeated lingeringly, “I don’t know. Does one have to love things? One uses them. That is all.”