“Well, then?”
“I cannot do otherwise than I am doing.”
“Not a week ago such a horror of that place seized you that you fled to the Hotel Westminster to spend the night there.”
“It is true, Amadeus. How do you know it?”
“Never mind that. Do you want to smother your very soul in horror? See to it that you leave a way of escape for yourself. These Engelschalls, mother and son, will make your life a veritable hell. If you fall into their snares, you’ll be worse off than some poor devil in the hands of usurers. Surely you’re not deceived in regard to the character of that crowd? A child would know what they are after. I warn you. They and others like them—the longer you live with them, the nearer will they bring you to despair.”
“I am not afraid, Amadeus,” Christian said. “One thing I don’t understand,” he added gently, “and it is that you of all people would deter me from doing what I feel to be right and necessary.”
Voss answered with intense passion. “You threw me a plank so that I might save myself and reach the shore. Will you thrust me back into the abyss before I feel the firm earth beneath my feet? Be what you really are! Don’t turn into a shadow before my very eyes! If you withdraw the plank, I cannot tell what will become of either of us.”
His face was horribly distorted, and his clenched hands shook.
XI
In his increasing oppression and confusion of mind, surrounded by hostility, mockery, and unbelief, the face of Ivan Becker appeared to Christian like a beautiful vision. Suddenly he knew that in some sense he had been waiting for Becker and counting on him.