The almost certain intuition that everything that happened to her was magically connected with something hidden was familiar to her from all the agitated periods of her life; she sensed it as something close by, somewhere behind her, and was inclined to wait for the hour of the miracle, when she would have nothing to do but close her eyes and lean back. Ulrich saw nothing helpful in supernatural reveries; his attention seemed mostly occupied with transforming, with infinite slowness, all unearthly content into an earthly one. Agathe realized that this was the reason why she had now left him for the third time in twenty-four hours, fleeing in obscure expectation of something that would take her into its care and allow her to rest from the afflic­tions, or perhaps just from the impatience, of her passions. But then as soon as she had calmed down, she would be herself again and back at his side, seeing in what he was teaching her the very possibility of salvation; and now, too, this lasted for a while. But when the memory of what had “almost” happened at home—and yet not happened!—obtruded more vividly, she was again profoundly at a loss. First she wanted to convince herself that the infinite realm of the unimaginable would have come to their aid if they had held out for another instant; then she reproached herself for not waiting to see what Ulrich would do; but in the end she dreamed that the right thing to do would have been simply to give in to love and grant overtaxed nature respite on a rung of the dizzying Jacob’s ladder they were climbing. But no sooner had she admitted this than she appeared to herself like one of those incompetent fairy-tale creatures who cannot contain themselves and in their womanly weakness prematurely break silence or some other oath, causing everything to collapse amid thunderclaps.

If her expectation now turned again to the man who was to help her find counsel, he not only possessed the great advantages bestowed on orderliness, certainty, kindly strictness, and self-possession by an ill-mannered, desperate display; but this stranger also had the special distinction of speaking about God with serene certainty, as if he were a daily guest in His house and in a position to intimate that there, everything that was mere passion and vanity was despised. So what might be awaiting her at Lindner’s? While she was asking herself this question, she pressed her feet more firmly on the ground as she walked and drew the coldness of the rain-drenched air into her lungs to make her mind completely sober; and then it began to seem highly probable to her that Ulrich, even though he was judging Lindner one-sidedly, nonetheless judged him more accurately than she did, since before her conversations with Ulrich, when her impression of Lindner was still fresh, her own thoughts about the good man had been quite mocking. She was amazed by her feet, which were taking her to him anyway, and she even took a horse-drawn bus to get there faster.