Therese answered her daughter's question: "It is a burned-out and chilled world, on which neither trees, flowers, nor animals, no air or water, no sounds or colors exist. When I was a girl at school, we used often to look through a telescope at the moon; it is full of mountains, and we were told they were the craters of extinct volcanoes. No telescope is powerful enough to show people on it, but learned men know with certainty that neither air nor water exists there. Without air and water nothing can live that has a human body, so no mortal can possibly be there."
"But what if something did really live in it?"
"What could do so?"
"I will tell you what I think. Often in the old times, when I was still alone, I could not rid myself of one engrossing thought—especially when I sat by myself on the beach, and looked into the water. I felt as if something were drawing me into it, and calling to me that it was good to be down below there, and that there all was peace. Then I said to myself—Good! the body would rest at the bottom of the Danube; but where would the soul go?—it must find a dwelling somewhere. Then the thought arose that the soul which wrenched itself so forcibly and by its own will from its mortal shell could only soar to the moon. I believe that now even more firmly. If neither trees nor flowers, neither water nor air, neither colors nor sounds, can there exist—well, it is all the better fitted for those who did not wish to be encumbered with a body: there they will find a world where there is nothing to trouble them, nor anything to give them pleasure."
Therese and Michael both rose with a start from beside Noémi, who could not understand what had moved them. She did not know that her own father was a suicide, and that he whose hand she held was ready to become one. Michael said the night was cool, they had better go in. One more haunting thought was now linked with the sight of the moon. The first he inherited from Timéa, the other from Noémi. What a fearful penalty—that the man should continually see before him in the heavens that shining witness, eternally recalling him to his first sin, the first fateful error of his ruined life!
The next day Michael left the island: he passed by the unfinished walnut-wood house without even glancing at it.
"You will return with the spring flowers," whispered Noémi tenderly in his ear. The poor thing thought it quite natural that for half of the year Michael should not belong to her. "But to whom does he then belong?" That question never occurred to her.
When Michael arrived at Komorn, the long journey had still more exhausted him. Timéa was frightened when she saw him, and could hardly recognize him; even Athalie was alarmed, and with good reason.
"You have been ill?" said Timéa, leaning on her husband's breast.
"Very ill, for many weeks."