“None!” Agathe interrupted him. “I am unfortunately ignorant of science!”^†

She emphasized this remark with her voice and seemed to find pleasure in it, perhaps with a kind of false impiety.

“But this is your milieu!” Lindner corrected her emphatically. “And whether it’s freedom in manners or scientific freedom, both are an expression of the same development: thought, will, and feeling detached from morality!”

Agathe again felt these words as sober shadows that were, however, cast by something darker that was in their proximity. She was not inclined to conceal her disappointment, but revealed it with a laugh: “Recently you advised me not to think of myself, but here you are talking about me incessantly.”

He repeated: “You are afraid of seeming old-fashioned to yourself!”

Agathe’s eyes flashed angrily. “I’m at a loss. So much of what you say has nothing to do with me!”

“And I say to you: ‘Ye were bought with a price, become not bond servants of men!’” The manner of his delivery, so oddly contrasting with his physical appearance, like a heavy flower on a weak stem, amused Agathe. She asked urgently, almost coarsely: “So what should I do? I am hoping for a definite answer from you.”

Lindner swallowed and his face darkened with earnestness. “Do that which is your duty!”

“I don’t know what my duty is!”

“Then you should look for duties!”

“But I don’t know what duties are!”

Lindner smiled grimly. “There we have it! The freedom of the personality!” he cried. “A vain mirage! You can see it in yourself: A person who is free is unhappy! A person who is free is a phantom!” he added, raising his voice further out of embarrassment as he spoke. But then he lowered it again and concluded with conviction: “You must return to your husband! Duty is what humanity in proper self-knowledge has erected against its own weakness. Duty is one and the same truth that all great personalities knew in their hearts or pointed to in visionary foreknowledge. Duty is the work of centuries of experience and the fruit of the inspired vision of the blessed. But duty is also what even the simplest person knows with certainty deep within himself, if only he lives his life with sincerity!”

“That was a hymn with quivering candles,” Agathe noted appreciatively.

To his annoyance, Lindner, too, felt that he had sung out of tune. He should have said something else but did not trust himself to recognize what the deviation from the genuine voice of his heart consisted in. He merely allowed himself the thought that this young creature must be deeply disappointed by her husband, since she was raging against herself so impudently and bitterly, and that despite all the censure she provoked, she was worthy of a stronger man; however, he had the impression that a far more dangerous thought was intent on following this one. But meanwhile Agathe slowly and very decisively shook her head; and with the instinctive assurance with which an excited person is seduced by another into doing something that brings a precarious balance to the point of collapse, she continued: “But we’re talking about my divorce! And why are you saying nothing more about God today? Why don’t you simply say to me: ‘God commands that you stay with Professor Hagauer!’? Because frankly I can’t imagine that He would want to command such a thing!”