Now, of course, he had to ask himself what on earth entitled him to resolve, like one who has fallen in love with himself, never again to do anything that left the soul indifferent. It runs counter to the spirit of the active life, which is second nature to every man of our time; and even though there were God-persuaded times in the past that were able to give rise to such an endeavor, it had faded away like the light of dawn in the growing strength of the sun. Ulrich felt a scent of reclusiveness and sweetness in himself that he was finding more and more distasteful. And so he sought to restrain his extravagant thoughts as fast as possible and admonished himself, though not quite sincerely, that the promise of a Thousand-Year Kingdom he had so oddly held out to his sister was, if one considered it reasonably, nothing more than a kind of charity; for no doubt living with Agathe would require of him a concerted deployment of delicacy and selflessness, qualities that had hitherto been all too lacking in him. He recalled, in the way one recalls an uncommonly transparent cloud sailing across the sky, certain moments of their time together that had already been of that kind. “Maybe the content of the Millennium is nothing but the burgeoning of this power that shows itself first in two people at a time, until eventually it becomes a resounding communion of all?” he wondered, slightly embarrassed. Once again he sought counsel from his own “affair with the major’s wife,” which he now set himself to remembering: Leaving aside the illusions of love, whose immaturity had been the cause of that mistake, he focused all his attention on the tender sensations of goodness and adoration he had been capable of in his solitude at the time, and it seemed to him that to feel utter trust and affection, or to live for another person, must be a happiness that would move one to tears, as beautiful as the luminous sinking of the day into the peace of evening, and, also to the point of tears, somewhat poor in pleasure and mentally uneventful. For at moments his plan was already striking him as comical, rather like an arrangement between two old bachelors to move in together, and such sudden glints of parody gave him a sense of how little the notion of a life of service in brotherly love was likely to bring him fulfillment. With relative dispassion he admitted to himself that from the beginning there had been a large measure of the asocial in the relationship between Agathe and himself. Not only the business with Hagauer and the will, but the whole emotional tone that prevailed between them pointed to something hard, not to say violent, and without a doubt their bond as brother and sister did not entail more love for each other than repulsion of the rest of the world. “No!” Ulrich thought. “Wanting to live for another person is nothing but the bankruptcy of an egotism that opens a new shop next door, with a partner!”