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with love for her, his dear one. No sooner had he silently uttered the magical word love than countless little associations and memories shot sparkling through his mind, with the extraordinary speed that only the utmost alarm can conjure up. Every one of them cast bright light on his feelings, on all the little details that he had never before ventured to admit to himself or understand. And only at this point did he realize how utterly he had been in thrall to her, and for how long—many months now.
    Hadn’t it been during Easter week this year, when she went to stay with her family for three days, that he had paced restlessly from room to room as if lost, unable to read a book, his mind in turmoil, although he could not say why? And on the night when she was to return, hadn’t he stayed up until one in the morning to hear her footsteps? Hadn’t his nervous impatience kept sending him downstairs too soon, to see if the car wasn’t coming yet? He remembered how, when his hand accidentally brushed hers at the theatre, a frisson ran from the touch of their fingers to the back of his neck. Now a hundred such little flashes of memory, trifles of which he had hardly been aware, raced stormily into his mind, into his blood, as if every dam had been breached, and they all made straight for his heart and came together there. Instinctively, he pressed his hand to his chest, where that heart was beating so violently, and now there was no help for it, he could no longer keep from admitting what his diffident and respectful instinct had so carefully managed to obscure for so long—he could not live now away from her presence. To be without that mild light shining on his way for two years, two months, even just two weeks, to enjoy no more of their pleasant conversations in the evenings—no, it was impossible to bear such a thought. And what had filled him with pride only ten minutes earlier, the mission to Mexico, the thought of his rise to have command of creative power, had shrunk within a second, had burst like a sparkling soap bubble. All that it meant now was distance, absence, a dungeon, banishment and exile, annihilation, a deprivation that he could not survive. No, it was impossible—his hand was already moving to the door handle again, he was on the point of going back into the study to tell the Councillor that he wouldn’t do it, to say he felt unworthy of the mission, he would rather stay here. But anxiety spoke up, warning him: not now! He must not prematurely betray a secret that was only just revealing itself to him. And he wearily withdrew his fevered hand from the cool metal.
    Once again he looked at her picture—the glance of her eyes seemed to be gazing ever deeper into him, but he could not see the smile around her mouth any more. Instead, he thought, she looked gravely, almost sadly out of the picture, as if to say, “You wanted to forget me.” He couldn’t bear that painted yet living gaze. He stumbled to his room, sinking on the bed with a strange sensation of horror almost like fainting, but curiously pervaded by a mysterious sweetness. Feverishly, he thought back to all that had happened to him in this house since he first arrived, and everything, even the most insignificant detail, now had a different meaning and appeared in a different light; it was all irradiated by the inner light of understanding, its weight was light as it soared up in the heated air of passion. He remembered all the kindness she had shown him. He was still surrounded by it; his eyes looked for the signs of it, he felt the things that her hand had touched, and they all had something of the joy of her presence in them. She was there in those inanimate objects; he sensed her friendly thoughts in them. And that certainty of her goodwill to him overwhelmed him with passion, yet deep below its current something in his nature still resisted, like a stone—there was something left unthought, something not yet cleared out of the way, and