Behind the curtain, Lijsbeth begins to cough. Her breath rattles in her chest like smoke trapped inside a flue. The coughing spell seems to last a lifetime. As Anna waits for it to subside, she is caught between her desire to hustle Wolfert downstairs and her responsibility to help her sister. She glances at the window, at the dazzling light gilding the thick clouds. Downstairs, somebody is hammering, the rhythmic blows like a clock’s weighted pendulum striking time. The sisters should be leaving for work soon, if not already be on their way out the door. Of late, Lijsbeth has been difficult to rouse. She slumbers past dawn, her energy depleted by fits of nocturnal coughing. Anna has learned to sleep through these disturbing interruptions, yet they often make their way into her dreams, taking on the nightmarish form of barking dogs or fiery explosions. In the worst ones, she watches Lijsbeth choking on poisoned fumes, expelling her final gasping breath while the room around her burns. Only she, Anna, is strangely immune from corporeal pain. Floating above the scene, she is curiously weightless, suspended in an invisible trench of water, her body, stripped of its earthly demands, requiring no air, no nourishment. Perhaps she is already dead and the cracked ceiling is the gateway to heaven, and she is simply waiting for Lijsbeth to join her before they take their last journey together. But this interpretation strikes her as false. Isn’t it more likely she is the cause of her sister’s ailment?