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he knows it. For the moment, he is preoccupied with one thing only: Felice has not thought enough, or perhaps not thought at all, about the confession he sent her. Her quick dismissal of it obsesses him, casts a pall on their future.
    What does he expect from her? Either she must drive him from her life or else accept the prospect of marriage without coitus, free him from an obligation he feels unable to meet. He even suggests that they not live in the same city. Discussing this with her is the real reason for the second meeting.
    He arrives in Berlin early on the morning of Sunday, May 11, 1913. He will leave again on Monday, May 12, in the evening. It is Whitsun, the weather mild and spring-like. He arrives at the home of Carl and Anna Bauerin the middle of the afternoon. His knees wobbling, he walks across their drawing room toward Felice. A shudder of aversion runs through him. He sees gold gleaming in his beloved’s mouth as she opens it to greet him: “this gleaming gold, a truly hellish luster for this inappropriate spot, and that grayish yellow porcelain” horrify him. He lowers his eyes, wants only to escape. At that precise moment, he feels with certainty through his whole body that no, he will never be able to possess this young woman.
    There are many people in the drawing room. Franz is in such a state of confusion that he is persuaded the people around him are giants, shaking their heads in resignation at his own small size. Felice, in high spirits, flits from person to person. The moment she stands next to Franz, her liveliness fades, her gaze wanders, she endures his silence or the stupid things he has to say. She finds that he looks unwell.
    “You seem exhausted,” she says.
    He doesn’t hear her. The suspicious glances that Frau Bauer casts at him frighten him particularly. Dressed all in black, sad, watchful, stiff, a stranger among her own family and friends, Frau Bauer looks disapprovingly, almost contemptuously, at the strange specimen her daughter has brought home. A man who seems ill at times, at others absent, dumb mostly.
    Then all at once, before the copious buffet laid out in the dining room, before the astonished guests, Franz stops being tongue-tied. In an excited voice, he tells the gathering about his vegetarianism. He pointedly helps himself to just a few vegetables, drinks only water. Only Erna, Felice’s sister, shows any sympathy. The others turn their backs on him.
    Noticing the vacuum he has created around himself, Franz senses disaster. He has not managed to steal even a quick kiss from Felice, and she has hardly given him the chance. When, haggard and crestfallen, Franz decides to leave the reception, Felice accompanies him as far as the hall. Franz grabs her hand, pulls off her glove, and kisses her bare palm. He thinks he sees an angry frown on the young woman’s face. He flees, his head reels, something in his breast is breaking.
    The next morning, they meet alone in the street for a few minutes. Felice, distracted and in a bad mood, has no idea where she stands. Her parents, her brother, her close relatives, her friends were all eager to meet this young man “of the two hundred letters” who was dying of love. What they saw was a ghost. They barely hide their disappointment. Standing stiffly on the sidewalk, her face a mask, her eyes avoiding his, Felice is clearly bored. Franz, at a loss, can’t find the words he came to say.
    “I cannot live without her. Nor can I live with her.” This thought runs through his head as he throws his clothes into his bag. He is back in his room at the Hotel Askanischer Hof, preparing to return to Prague. He cannot possess this woman, but he wishes that he were entirely within her, or she within him. The separation into two people is unbearable.
    Once more at home, he writes her the next morning and almost every day thereafter (May 12, 13, 16, 18, 23, 24, 25, 27, and 28). He also writes her almost every day in June (June 1, 2, 6, 7, 10,