But this time Agathe, in her own way, fared not very differently from him. Her conscience was oppressed when it was not uplifted; for she had swung into action too forcefully and now felt like a woman standing on a swing, exposed to judgment. At moments like this she feared the revenge of the world for the capriciousness with which she usually treated men who spoke of reality in earnest, like the husband she had provoked and the preserver of that husband’s memory who was so eagerly concerned for her soul. In the thousandfold flurry of charming activities life is filled with by day and by night, not a single pursuit could have been found for her that she would have wanted to engage with wholeheartedly; and whatever she ventured to do of her own accord had to be safe above all from the reproach, deprecation, or even contempt of others. And yet what a strange peace there was precisely in that! Perhaps it is permissible to say, in variation of a proverb, that a bad conscience makes an almost softer pillow than a good one, provided the conscience is bad enough. The mind’s ceaseless ancillary occupation of trying to eke out a good personal conscience from whatever wrong it is involved in then comes to a stop, and what remains is an independence without bounds or measure. A tender solitude, a sky-high pride occasionally poured their splendor over these outings into the world. At such moments, Agathe’s inner experience could make the world seem bloated and rotund, like a tethered balloon circled by swallows, or degrade it to a background as small as a forest on the edge of the horizon. The violated civil obligations were only distantly alarming, like a far-off, rudely advancing sound; they were unimportant, if not unreal. An immense order that is ultimately nothing but an immense absurdity was what the world had become. And yet precisely for that reason every detail Agathe encountered had the tautness, the throbbing tension of the “once and never again,” the almost exalted nature of a personal first discovery that is magically appointed and permits no repetition; and when she wanted to talk about it, it was with the understanding that not a single word could be said twice without changing its meaning. All of this endowed the irresponsibility of strolling through the crowd with a responsibility that was difficult to grasp.

The siblings’ attitude toward the world at that time was therefore not an entirely impeccable expression of sympathy with others; in its own way, it contained affection and aversion side by side in a state of emotion that hovered in space like a rainbow, instead of these opposites setting up house as a hybrid blend, the way they do in the self-assured state of ordinary experience. And so it happened that one day their conversation took a turn that was indicative of their attitude toward each other and their surroundings, even though this exchange did not yet go beyond their familiar horizons.