But Agathe had already found out that the notary her father had employed was no longer alive. “No one knows about this any longer,” she said. “Don’t touch it!”

Ulrich noticed that she had taken a piece of paper and was making an attempt to imitate her father’s handwriting.

Attracted by this, he had stepped closer to stand behind her. There, in a pile, lay the sheets of paper on which his father’s hand had lived, its movement still palpable; and there was Agathe conjuring something almost identical onto fresh sheets of paper, like an inspired actress. It was strange watching this. The purpose for which it was happening, the thought that it was forgery, vanished. And in truth Agathe had not given this any thought at all. An aura of justice with flames instead of logic surrounded her. Goodness, decency, and law-abidance, as she had experienced these virtues in the people she knew, Hagauer in particular, had always seemed to her as if a stain had been removed from a dress; but the wrong that hovered around her at this moment was like the drowning of the world in the light of a rising sun. It seemed to her as if right and wrong were no longer general terms and a compromise arranged for millions of people, but the magical encounter of Me and You, the madness of a first creation, not yet comparable with any thing, not measurable by any standard. Essentially she was making Ulrich the gift of a crime, by placing herself in his hands, fully trusting that he would understand her rashness, much as children will come up with the most unexpected solutions when they want to give a present and have nothing to give. And Ulrich guessed most of this. As his eyes followed her movements, he experienced a pleasure he had never known, for there was an enchanting absurdity in succumbing, for once entirely and without caution, to what another being was doing. Even as the memory that harm was being done to a third person intervened, it merely flashed by for a second like an ax, and he quickly reassured himself that it really wasn’t anyone’s business what his sister was doing there; it was by no means certain that these handwriting experiments would actually be used, and what Agathe did inside her own four walls remained her own affair as long it had no effect beyond them.

She now called out to her brother, turned around, and was surprised to find him standing behind her. She awoke. She had written everything she wanted to write, and now resolutely held the page over the candle flame in order to make the document look old. She held out her free hand to Ulrich, who did not take it, but he was also unable to shroud his face entirely in a dark frown. Thereupon she said: “Listen! When something is a contradiction and you love it for both its sides—really love it!—doesn’t that already resolve the contradiction, like it or not?!”