The last day she had to spend in absentia took her by surprise; suddenly everything in the house was tidied up and cleared out, and all that remained was to hand over the keys to the old couple, who were being pensioned off under the provisions of the will and would stay behind in the servants’ cottage until the property found a new owner. Agathe had refused to move into the hotel and wanted to stay at the house until it was time to go to the train station between midnight and morning. The whole house was packed up and shrouded. A single bulb was lit. Some crates had been pushed together to serve as a table and a chair. At the edge of a ravine, on a terrace of crates, a tablecloth and cutlery had been laid out for dinner. Her father’s old servant balanced a loaded tray through light and shadow; he and his wife had insisted on helping from their own kitchen, so that the “gracious young lady,” as they put it, should be properly served when dining for the last time in her parental home. And suddenly Agathe thought, completely outside the spirit in which she had spent these days: “Could they have noticed something after all?” It was not inconceivable that she had neglected to destroy all the sheets of paper on which she had practiced before changing the will. She felt cold terror, the nightmare weight of fear that clings to every limb, the miserly fear of reality that gives nothing to the spirit but only depletes it. At that moment she became fiercely aware of her newly awakened desire to live. It rebelled violently against the possibility of her being prevented from doing so. When the old servant returned, she searched his face. But the old man went unsuspectingly to and fro with his cautious smile, steeped in a silent and solemn emotion of his own. She could not peer into him any more than she could see the inside of a wall; impossible to know whether there was anything else behind that blank glitter. She too now felt a mute solemnity and sadness. He had always been her father’s confidant, always ready to betray every one of his children’s secrets to him: but Agathe had been born in this house, and everything that had happened since was coming to an end today, and it moved her that she and he were now solemn and alone. She formed the resolution to give him a special small gift of money, and in sudden weakness decided to say it was from Professor Hagauer—not out of cunning, but as an act of atonement and with the intention of leaving nothing undone, even though it was clear to her that this was as inexpedient as it was superstitious. Before the old man returned, she also took out her two little containers, the poison capsule and the locket with the image of her unforgotten beloved. The locket she pushed, after a last frowning look at the young man, under the cover of a loosely nailed crate destined to go into storage indefinitely and apparently filled with kitchenware or lighting fixtures, for she heard metal clinking against metal, like branches falling from a tree; but the capsule with the poison she put in the place where she had formerly worn the portrait.