Frowning, Ulrich stared at his sister. “A person who will not polish an ancient poem, preferring to leave it weather-beaten, with half its meaning destroyed, is the same as the one who will never put a marble nose where a nose is missing on an ancient statue,” he thought. “You could call that a sense of style, but that’s not what it is. Nor is it a person with such a lively imagination that he doesn’t mind when something is missing. Rather, it’s the person who attaches no importance at all to completeness and therefore won’t demand of his feelings that they be ‘whole.’ She has probably kissed,” he concluded in a sudden turn, “without feeling herself swept away in body and soul.” It seemed to him at this moment that those ardent verses were all he needed to know of his sister to realize that she was never “completely inside” of anything, that she too was a person of “passionate incompleteness” like himself. This even made him forget the other half of his nature, which required moderation and control. He could now have told his sister with certainty that none of her actions ever corresponded to her nearest surroundings, but were all dependent on a much vaster surrounding that is highly subject to caution, indeed one could venture to say a surrounding that does not begin or end anywhere, and the conflicting impressions of their first evening would have found a satisfactory explanation. But his customary reserve proved to be stronger, and so he waited, curious and even a little doubtful, to see how Agathe would come down from the high limb she had ventured out on. She was still standing with her arm raised against the doorpost, and just a moment too much could spoil the whole scene. He despised women who behave as if they have been placed into the world by a painter or a stage director, or whose tune fades away in an artful pianissimo after a moment of exaltation like Agathe’s. “One possibility,” he thought, “would be for her to suddenly let herself slide down from her peak of enthusiasm with the benumbed, somnambulant look of a medium coming out of a trance; she probably has no other option, and even that will be embarrassing!” But Agathe seemed to know this herself, or else she had glimpsed the danger lurking in her brother’s eyes: she gaily leapt from the high limb she had ventured out on, landed on both feet, and stuck out her tongue at Ulrich.

But then she was grave and quiet again, and without saying a word went to fetch the medals. And so the siblings set about acting against their father’s last will.

It was Agathe who carried out the plan. Ulrich was shy of touching the old man lying there defenseless, but Agathe had a way of doing wrong that did not permit the thought of wrongdoing to arise. The movements of her eyes and hands resembled those of a woman ministering to an invalid, and at times they also had the unspoiled endearing quality of young animals that briefly pause in their play to make sure their master is watching. Ulrich collected the medals as they were removed and handed Agathe the replicas. He was reminded of the thief who steals for the first time with his heart leaping out of his chest. And if it seemed to him that the stars and crosses shone more brightly in his sister’s hand than the ones in his own, indeed that they virtually turned into magical devices, perhaps it was really so in the black-green room filled with many reflections of large leafy plants, but perhaps it was also an effect of his sister’s will seizing hold of his own, leading hesitantly but with youthful eagerness; and since there was no evident plan in this, there arose again at these moments of unalloyed contact an almost extensionless and therefore intangibly powerful feeling of their joint existence.