That was why Ulrich had already gotten up before Agathe built her peninsula in the drawing room, and had stolen quietly into the study, where he took up his interrupted mathematical investigation, actually more as a way of passing the time than with an expectation of success. But to his not inconsiderable surprise, in the few hours of a single morning he brought to completion, except for some insignificant details, the work he had left lying untouched for several months. This unexpected solution came about with the help of one of those ideas that lie outside the norm and of which one might say, not that they show up when one no longer expects them but rather that their startling effulgence reminds one of the sudden radiance of the beloved who has been there all along among the other girls before the perplexed suitor ceases to understand how he could have thought any others her equal. Such inspirations involve more than the intellect—there is always some prerequisite of passion at work—and Ulrich felt that at this moment he should be finished and free, and in fact, as no reason or purpose could be found in the thing, he was positively struck by a sense of having finished prematurely; and now the remaining energy drove outward into reverie. He glimpsed a possibility of applying the idea that had solved his problem to far greater questions, playfully dreamed up an outline of such a system, and in these moments of happy relaxation even felt tempted by Professor Schwung’s suggestion that he return to his career and seek the path that leads to success and influence. But when, after a few minutes of intellectual satisfaction, he soberly considered what the consequences would be if he were to yield to his ambition and now, as a laggard, set out on an academic path, it occurred to him for the first time that he was too old for such a venture. Not since his boyhood had he felt this half-impersonal concept of age as something that had inherent substance, nor had he ever known the thought: There is something you can no longer do!

When Ulrich was telling this to his sister afterward, in the late afternoon, he happened to use the word “fate,” and that aroused her interest. She wanted to know what “fate” was.

“Something halfway between ‘my toothache’ and ‘King Lear’s daughters!’” Ulrich replied. “I’m not one of those people who like to bandy this word around.”

“But for young people it’s part of the song of life; they want to have a fate and don’t know what it is.”

“There will come a time when people are better informed, and then the word ‘fate’ will probably have acquired a statistical meaning,” Ulrich responded.

Agathe was twenty-seven, still young enough to have retained some of the hollow forms of feeling that one develops in the beginning of life, and old enough to have intimations of the content reality pours into them later. She replied: “I guess getting old is a fate in itself!” and was very dissatisfied with this answer, which expressed her youthful melancholy in a way that struck her as insipid.