Moreover, that fateful performance had been preceded by a decision to live together or at least share his house in the coming weeks, and the short time that was left before Ulrich’s departure had constrained them to talk primarily about that. They had agreed provisionally on “however long it will take to work out the divorce,” so that Agathe would have counsel and protection. But now, as Ulrich recalled that conversation, he also remembered an earlier remark his sister had made, that she wanted “to kill Hagauer,” and evidently this “plan” had been working in her and taken on a new form. She had vigorously insisted on selling the family property quickly, which might very well have had the purpose of causing the estate to dissolve, though the sale might have seemed advisable for other reasons as well; in any case, the siblings had hired a broker and set their terms. And so Ulrich now had to consider as well the question of what would happen to his sister after he had returned to his carelessly provisional life, which he himself could not approve of. The situation she was in could not possibly continue. Surprisingly close though they had grown in the brief time they had been together—a fated crossing of their paths it seemed, though no doubt the result of all sorts of unrelated details; while Agathe perhaps had a more far-fetched view of it—they knew so little of each other in the many and various superficial respects on which a shared life depends. Indeed, when he thought of his sister impartially, Ulrich found many unresolved questions, and he could not even form a clear conception of her past; the most revealing light seemed to be shed by the conjecture that she had a very lax way of treating everything that happened through her or to her and that she lived very precariously and perhaps fantastically in expectations that ran alongside her actual life, for this at least could plausibly explain her having lived with Hagauer for so long and then broken with him so suddenly. It would also explain the indifference with which she treated the future: she had left home, that seemed to satisfy her for the time being, and as for the question of the next step, she simply avoided it. And Ulrich himself was unable either to picture her now living without a husband and waiting indefinitely like a young girl, or to imagine the man for whom his sister would be the right woman; and this he had also said to her shortly before he left.

But she had looked into his face with alarm—though probably she was clowning a bit, pretending to be alarmed—and then calmly answered with a question: “Can’t I just stay with you for the time being, without our having to decide everything?”

It was in this vague way, without any more definite notion, that the idea of living together was confirmed. Ulrich realized that this experiment would put an end to his experiment of a “life on vacation.” He did not want to think of the possible consequences, but the fact that his life would from now on be subject to certain restrictions was not unwelcome, and for the first time he thought again of the circle of people, and especially the women, involved in the Parallel Campaign. The prospect, entailed in this change, of cutting himself off from everything was wonderfully appealing. Just as it often takes only a small alteration in a room to turn its dull reverberations into glorious resonance, so now in his imagination his little house was transformed into a shell in which one could hear a muted echo of the city’s noise, like the murmur of a distant river.