And so in the course of time the wall calendar became a festering wound, reminding Hagauer at every glance how long his wife had avoided coming home. Thrifty with his emotions as with his housekeeping, he wrote her postcards, giving her news of himself and asking her, with gradually mounting urgency, when she expected to return. He received no answer. Soon he no longer beamed when acquaintances asked him sympathetically whether his wife would be away much longer in fulfillment of sad obligations, but fortunately he always had a great deal to do, since apart from the demands of school and of the clubs he belonged to, each day brought him through the mail a plethora of invitations, inquiries, avowals of approval, attacks, proofs to be corrected, magazines and important books: for while Hagauer’s human self resided in the provinces, forming part of the unappealing impression these were capable of making on a stranger passing through, his mind was at home in Europe, and this prevented him for a long time from grasping the full significance of Agathe’s prolonged absence. But one day there arrived with the mail a letter from Ulrich dryly informing him of the facts: that Agathe had no intention of returning to him and was requesting his consent to a divorce. Despite its polite form, this letter was so curt and so inconsiderate in tone that Hagauer indignantly realized Ulrich was about as concerned with his, the recipient’s, feelings as if he intended to remove an insect from a leaf. His first movement of inner defense was: Nothing serious, a whim! The message lay like a mocking specter in the bright daylight of pressing correspondence, tributes, and honorable mentions. It was only that evening, when Hagauer saw his empty house again, that he sat down at his desk and informed Ulrich with dignified brevity that it would be best to regard his note as not having ever been written. But soon a new letter from Ulrich arrived rejecting this view, repeating Agathe’s wish (without her knowing about it), and asking Hagauer, in somewhat more courteous detail, to do all that he could to facilitate the necessary legal steps, as befitted a man of his moral stature, and as was desirable, too, if the deplorable concomitants of a public dispute were to be avoided. Now Hagauer grasped the seriousness of the situation and allowed himself three days’ time to come up with an answer that would leave nothing to be either desired or regretted afterward.