There I saw my friend sitting, upright and in his customary attitude. But he looked quite different from usual. Something I did not know went out from him, enveloped him. I thought his eyes were closed, until I saw he held them open. But they were stiff as if gazing within or directed to an object a great way off. He sat there perfectly motionless; he seemed not to be breathing and his mouth was as if carved out of wood or stone. His face was white, uniformly white, as stone. His brown hair showed more signs of life than did any other feature. His hands lay before him on the desk, without life, as still as inanimate objects, like stones or fruit, white and motionless, yet not relaxed, but as if controlling the secret springs of a powerful life force. The sight made me tremble. He is dead, I thought. I almost said it out loud. But I knew he was not dead. Mesmerized, I hung on his look; my eyes were riveted to this white, stone mask. I felt it was the real Demian. The Demian who was in the habit of walking and talking with me, that was only one side of him, a half. Demian, who from time to time played a part, who accommodated himself to circumstances out of mere complacence. But the real Demian looked like this, with just this look of stone, prehistorically old, like an animal, beautiful and cold, dead yet secretly full of fabulous life force. And around him this still emptiness, this infinite ethereal space, this lonely death! “Now he has quite retired into himself,” I felt with a shudder. Never had I been so isolated. I had no part in him, he was unattainable, he was further from me than if he had been on the most distant isle in the world. I scarcely understood why no one besides myself noticed it. I thought that everyone would have to remark him, that everyone would shudder. But no one gave him any attention. He sat like a picture and, as I could not prevent myself from thinking, as stiff as a strange idol. A fly settled on his forehead, moved slowly down over his nose and lips--not a muscle, not a nerve in his face twitched. Where, where was he now? What was he thinking, what was he feeling? Was he in heaven or in hell? It was impossible for me to question him. When I saw him at the end of the lesson living and breathing again, when his glance met mine, was he as he formerly had been? Where did he come from? Where had he been? He seemed tired. His face had its normal color, his hands moved again, but his brown hair was lustreless and fatigued, as it were. In the days following I practised a new exercise in my bedroom several times. I sat stiffly on a chair, kept my eyes fixed, and held myself perfectly motionless. I waited to see how long I could maintain this attitude, and what the sensation would be like. However, I merely got very tired, and suffered from a violent twitching of the eyelids. The confirmation took place soon after, of which no important recollections remain with me.