Nevertheless, the thought of giving up life was anything but a game for Agathe. It seemed profoundly believable to her that after so much fruitless agitation a state of blissful repose should follow, which inadvertently assumed a kind of corporeal substance in her imagination. She experienced it this way because she felt no need for the stirring illusion that the world can be improved, and because she was at all times prepared to relinquish her share in the world completely, so long as that could be done in a pleasant fashion; besides, she had already had a special encounter with death in that unusual sickness that had befallen her on the borderline between childhood and girlhood. That was when—in a scarcely perceptible depletion of her strength, which seemed to inject itself into each tiniest span of time even while, as a whole, it advanced with irresistible speed—more and more parts of her body fell away from her and vanished into the void; but in step with this decline and this turning away from life, there had been an unforgettable new striving toward a goal that banished all the agitation and fear that came with her illness, a curiously meaningful state in which she was even able to exert a certain domination over the adults around her, while they became increasingly unsure of themselves. It is not inconceivable that this advantage, which she had come to know under such impressive circumstances, later formed the nucleus of her spiritual readiness to withdraw from life in a similar fashion if, for some reason, the excitements it offered did not correspond to her expectations; but more probably it was the other way around and the illness that enabled her to escape the demands of school and home was the first expression of her transparent relationship to the world, which made her permeable, as it were, to a ray of feeling she could not explain. For Agathe felt herself to be of a spontaneous, simple disposition, warm, lively, even fun-loving and easily satisfied, and indeed she had adapted herself amicably to many very different kinds of situations; nor had she ever experienced that collapse into indifference that befalls women who can no longer bear their disillusionment: but in the midst of the laughter or the tumult of sensual adventuring that still continued, there was a sense of debasement that made every fiber of her body tired and nostalgic for something else, the most nearly accurate name of which would probably have to be Nothing.