She wanted to walk until evening. Further from home with every step. She assumed that by the time she was stopped by the barrier of evening, her decision would be made. It was the decision to kill herself. It was not exactly the decision to kill herself but the expectation that the decision would be final by evening. A desperate seething and whirling in her head was behind this expectation. She did not even have anything to kill herself with. Her little poison capsule was in a drawer somewhere or in a suitcase. The only thing that was final about her death was the yearning never to have to go back again. She wanted to walk out of life. Of that wish, the walking was already there. With every step, already, she was leaving her life.

When she grew tired, she began to feel a longing for meadows and woods, for walking in silence and open air. But there was no way to get there on foot. She took a streetcar. She had been raised to control herself in front of strangers. So when she bought a ticket and asked for directions, her voice betrayed no agitation. She sat upright and still, with not a quiver in so much as a finger. And as she sat like this, the thoughts came. She would no doubt have felt better if she could have given vent to her feelings; with her limbs fettered, these thoughts were like big bundles she tried in vain to force through an opening. She resented what Ulrich had said. She did not want to hold it against him. She denied herself the right to do that. What good was she to him?! She took up his time and gave him nothing in return; she disturbed his work and his way of life. At the thought of his way of life she felt a pang. In all the time she had lived with him, no other woman seemed to have entered the house. Agathe was convinced that her brother always needed to have a woman. So he was depriving himself for her sake. And as she was unable to compensate him in any way, she was selfish and wicked. At this moment she would have liked to turn around and tenderly beg his forgiveness. But then she remembered how cold he had been. Obviously he regretted having taken her in. All the things he had planned and said before he had gotten sick of her—he no longer mentioned any of them! Once again Agathe’s heart was tormented by the great disillusionment that had come with the letter. She was jealous. Senselessly and vulgarly jealous. She wished she could force herself on her brother, and felt the passionate and impotent friendship of one who rushes headlong into the path of rejection. “I could steal for him, walk the streets for him!” she thought, and though she realized this was ridiculous, she could not help it. Ulrich’s talk, with its joking manner and apparently impartial superiority, felt like a mockery. She admired his aplomb and all those intellectual needs surpassing her own. But she could not see why all ideas should always apply to all human beings equally. What she needed in her shame and humiliation was personal comfort, not general edification! She did not want to be brave!! And after a while she reproached herself for being the way she was, and increased her pain by imagining that she deserved nothing better than Ulrich’s indifference.