Before signing this letter, Hagauer read it through once more, found its analysis of the psychological type in question very incomplete, but refrained from altering anything, except that at the end—expelling through his moustache with a vigorous exhalation the unaccustomed, proudly accomplished effort to reflect on his wife, and pondering how much still needed to be said on the question of the “modern age”—he interpolated, above the word “responsibility,” a chivalrous locution about his venerated father-in-law’s precious bequest to him.

After Agathe had read all this, a strange thing happened: the content of these remarks did not leave her unaffected. Slowly, after reading it again word for word—standing all the while, without taking the time to sit down—she let the letter sink and handed it to Ulrich, who had been observing his sister’s agitation with surprise.

20

ULRICH AND AGATHE LOOK FOR A REASON AFTER THE FACT

While Ulrich read, Agathe watched the play of expressions on his face and was disheartened. He had bowed his head over the letter, and his response seemed irresolute, as though undecided between mockery, gravity, sorrow, or contempt. At that moment a heavy weight descended on her; it encroached on her from all sides, as if the air were becoming dense and unbearably stale after having just recently been unnaturally, deliciously light. What Agathe had done with her father’s will was for the first time oppressing her conscience. But it would be insufficient to say that she suddenly realized the full measure of the guilt she had incurred in actual fact; rather, what she felt was the full measure of her guilt in relation to everything, including her brother, and the sum of it all was an indescribable disillusionment. Everything she had done seemed incomprehensible. She had spoken of wanting to kill her husband, she had forged a will, and she had attached herself to her brother without asking him if she would be disrupting his life: she had done this in a kind of imaginative delirium. And what she was especially ashamed of at this moment was that the most obvious and natural thought had never occurred to her, for any other woman wanting to free herself from a husband she does not like will either look for a better one or compensate herself by some other, equally natural action. Ulrich himself had pointed this out often enough, but she had not listened. Now she stood there and did not know what he would say. Her behavior seemed to her so obviously that of someone who is really not of sound mind that she thought Hagauer was right to hold up a mirror to her in the way that he had; and the sight of his letter in Ulrich’s hand mortified her, much as a person might feel when, already accused of a crime, he receives a letter from a former teacher assuring him of his contempt. Of course she had never allowed Hagauer to have any influence over her; nevertheless, the effect was as though he were in a position to say: “I had the wrong idea about you!” or “Unfortunately I was never mistaken about you and always had the feeling you would come to a bad end!” In her need to shake off this ridiculous and sorrowful feeling, she interrupted Ulrich, who was still attentively reading the letter and, it seemed, finding it hard to read all the way through.