“It’s only because you’ve already volunteered so much without coming to the point,” her brother said, playfully settling the debt implied by their mutual confessions of fault. “How can I hit the mark if you won’t tell me anything about the man for whose sake you’re finally leaving Hagauer?”

Agathe looked at him like a child or a student who feels misjudged by her teacher. “Does it have to be a man?! Can’t it happen by itself? Have I done something wrong by leaving him without a lover? I suppose I would be lying to you if I claimed that I had never had a lover; I don’t want to be so absurd; but I don’t have a lover now and I would resent it if you thought I couldn’t leave Hagauer unless I had one!”

Her brother had no choice but to assure her that passionate women sometimes leave their husbands without having a lover, and that this was the more dignified course. —The tea for which they had met had been converted into an informal early supper, at Ulrich’s request. He was very tired and wanted to go to bed early in order to get a good night’s sleep, for the next day promised all sorts of business and unrest. Now, as they smoked their last cigarettes before parting, he didn’t know what to make of his sister. There was nothing either emancipated or bohemian about her, even though she was sitting there in the wide trousers in which she had received her unknown brother. It was more something hermaphroditic, it seemed to him now; as she gestured and moved in conversation, the light, masculine garment, which was semitransparent, like water, suggested the delicate form underneath, and in contrast to the independent freedom of her legs, her lovely hair was gathered up in decidedly feminine style. But the center of this amphibious impression was still her face, which possessed the charm of a woman to a high degree and yet had something missing or held in reserve whose nature he could not make out.

And that he knew so little about her and was sitting with her so intimately, and yet not at all as he would with a woman to whom he would be a man, this was something very pleasant, in the lassitude to which he was now beginning to surrender.

“A big change since yesterday!” he thought.

He was grateful for that and tried to think of some affectionate brotherly thing to say to her upon parting, but since he lacked any experience with this, nothing occurred to him. So he just put an arm around her and kissed her.

3

DAYBREAK IN A HOUSE OF MOURNING