Lindner shrugged his high shoulders indignantly; in fact, their swift rising movement made it seem as if he himself were ascending. “I never talked to you about this. That was just something you tried to do!” he gruffly repudiated her. “And as for the rest, don’t believe for a moment that God concerns himself with our petty emotional squabbles! That is what His law is for, which we must follow! Or doesn’t that seem heroic enough for you, since all anyone wants these days is the ‘personal’ touch? Well, in that case I’ll challenge your standards with a higher heroism, that of heroic submission!”

Every word he had said implied considerably more, he believed, than a layman ought to permit himself, even if it were only in his thoughts; Agathe, on the other hand, faced with such rude derision, could only smile steadily if she did not want to be forced to stand up and break off the visit; and of course she did this with such adroit assurance that Lindner felt himself vexed into ever greater confusion. He noticed how, more and more, an alarming influx of ideas was feeding an intoxicating ardor that robbed him of his powers of reflection and resounded with the will to break the obstinate mind and perhaps save the soul he saw before him. “Our duty is painful!” he exclaimed. “Our duty may be repulsive and disgusting! Don’t assume that I have the intention of being your husband’s advocate or that I am naturally predisposed to take his side. But you must obey the law, because that is the only thing that guarantees us lasting peace and protects us from ourselves.”

Now Agathe laughed at him openly; she had guessed at the weapon that the effects stemming from her divorce had placed in her hand, and she turned the knife in the wound. “I understand little of all this,” she said. “But may I honestly confess to you an impression I have? When you are angry, you become a little salacious.”

“Oh, stop that!” Lindner rebuked her. He recoiled and had only the single wish not to admit such a thing at any price. He raised his voice in defense and implored the sinful phantom sitting before him: “The spirit must not submit to the flesh and its charms and horrors! Not even in the form of revulsion! And I say to you: Even though mastery of your carnal reluctance, which the school of marriage has evidently exacted of you, may be painful, you are not allowed to run away from it. For there lives in man a desire for liberation, and we can no more be slaves to the repugnance of our flesh than to its pleasures! This is obviously what you wanted to hear, otherwise you would not have come to me!” he concluded, no less grandiosely than spitefully. He stood towering in front of Agathe, the threads of his beard moving around his lips. Never before had he spoken such words to a woman, except to his deceased wife, and there his feelings had been different. For now they were mingled with lust, as if he were swinging a whip in his fist to chastise the entire globe, and at the same time he felt anxious as he found himself soaring at the height of his penitentiary sermon, like a hat swept away by a tornado.