Somehow they managed to leave the place where each had stood steeped in private reverie, and walked on together without having spoken their minds. The wind had picked up again, and because Agathe seemed tired, Ulrich suggested they pay a visit to a shepherd’s cottage he knew of nearby. They soon found it, a stone cabin. They had to stoop as they entered the door, and the shepherd’s wife stared at them with defensive embarrassment. In the Germano-Slavic dialect that was spoken in that region and that he still dimly recalled, Ulrich asked if they might warm themselves and eat their provisions in the shelter of the house, and bolstered this request so voluntarily with an offer of money that the involuntary hostess broke out into a horrified lamentation that in her repulsive poverty she was unable to offer “such beautiful guests” better hospitality. She wiped off the greasy table by the window, lit some brushwood in the stove, and put a pot with goat’s milk over the flame. Agathe, however, had immediately squeezed past the table to the window without paying attention to the troubles that were being taken, as if it were a matter of course that one would find shelter somewhere, and a matter of indifference where. She looked out through the foggy little square of four panes onto the inland side of the Rampart, an area that, lacking the expansive view offered by the cliff, reminded one more of the feeling of a swimmer surrounded by cresting green waves. Though the day was not yet declining toward evening, it had passed its zenith and begun to lose its light. Agathe suddenly asked: “Why don’t you ever talk to me seriously?”

What better answer could Ulrich have given than to glance up at her briefly with a look that was supposed to represent innocence and surprise? He was occupied with spreading out ham, sausage, and eggs on a sheet of paper between himself and his sister.

But Agathe continued: “When one accidentally bumps into your body, it hurts and there’s a shock at the enormous difference. But when I want to ask you something important, you dissolve into thin air!” She did not touch the food Ulrich pushed towards her; indeed, in her aversion to concluding the day with a rural banquet she had raised herself up so straight she was not even touching the table. And now something happened that was almost a repetition of their climb up the country road. Ulrich shoved aside the mugs of goat’s milk that had just been brought to the table from the stove and were emitting an odor that was very disagreeable to an uninitiated sense of smell; and the slight nausea it caused had the sobering, clarifying effect one sometimes gets from a sudden bitterness. “I have always spoken seriously to you,” he retorted. “I can’t help it if you don’t like what I say, because what you dislike in my responses is the morality of our time.” At that moment it became evident to him that he wanted to explain to his sister, as completely as he possibly could, everything she would have to know in order to understand herself, and to some extent her brother as well. And with the resolution of a man who regards any interruption as superfluous, he set out on a lengthy speech.