The man by her side did not answer right away. He opened his mouth to speak several times, but it seemed he was forcing himself to wait. Finally, he said: “Probably one can only help someone who is suffering from something one has lived through oneself.”

He fell silent. Agathe laughed at the thought that this man could suppose that he might have experienced what she was suffering, which would fill him with revulsion if he knew what it was. The man seemed not to hear this laugh or else to regard it as bad manners due to nervous agitation.

After a moment’s reflection he said calmly: “Of course I don’t mean that anyone has a right to imagine that he can show anyone else how to go about his life. But you see: In a catastrophe, fear is infectious, and—escape is infectious too! I mean the mere fact of having escaped, as from a burning house. All the others have lost their heads and are running into the flames: What a tremendous help if a single person stands outside and waves, nothing more than that: waving and shouting that there is a way out, though his words may be unintelligible to them. . . !”

Agathe nearly laughed again at the dreadful thoughts this kindly man harbored in his imagination; but just because they were so incongruent with his appearance, their expression molded his wax-soft face almost uncannily from within.

“My, you talk like a fireman!” she replied, deliberately adopting the teasing superficial manner of a fashionable lady in order to hide her curiosity. “But surely you must have formed some idea of what kind of catastrophe I am involved in?!” —Unwittingly, the seriousness in her mockery came through, for this man’s simple notion of wanting to help her aroused her indignation by the equally simple gratitude that arose in her. The stranger looked at her with astonishment. Then he collected himself and retorted almost in the manner of a rebuke: “You are probably still too young to know that our life is very simple. It is insurmountably confusing only when one thinks of oneself; but the moment one does not think of oneself and asks oneself how one can help another person, it is very simple!”

Agathe considered this and did not respond. And whether because of her silence or because of the encouragingly wide-open space into which his words sailed out, the stranger went on talking without looking at her: “The overestimation of the personal is a modern superstition. These days there is so much talk of a culture of personality, living life to the fullest, life affirmation, and the like. But these murky, ambiguous terms only betray their users’ need to veil the true meaning of their revolt. What is it that one is supposed to affirm? Everything and anything, with no discrimination? Development always involves opposition, an American thinker has said. We can’t very well develop one side of our nature without holding back the growth of the other side. And what is it that should be lived to the full? The mind or the instincts? Our whims or our character? Selfishness or love? If our higher nature is to be lived to the full, our lower nature must learn renunciation and obedience.”