I went away and left him standing there. He made two, three steps in my direction, then he stopped, turned round and ran away. I felt sick from a feeling of pity and horror. I could not get rid of the feeling until I got home to my little room, and placing my few pictures before me, I surrendered myself up with passionate fervor to my dreams. My dreams came back at once, the dream of front door and crest, of mother and the strange woman, and I saw the features of the woman so very clearly that I began to draw her picture the same evening. In a few days this drawing was finished, painted in as if unconsciously in dreamy quarter-of-an-hour periods. In the evening I hung it on the wall, put the reading lamp in front of it, and stood before it as before a spirit with whom I had to fight until victory should be decided one way or the other. It was a face similar to the former, resembling my friend Demian, in certain traits even resembling myself. One eye stood perceptibly higher than the other, the look passed over me, sunk in a staring gaze, full of destiny. I stood before it. Such was my inward exertion that I became cold to the marrow. I questioned the picture, I abused it, I caressed it, I prayed to it. I called it mother, I called it beloved, called it strumpet and whore, called it Abraxas. Meanwhile words of Pistorius crossed my mind, or of Demian? I could not recollect on what occasion they had been spoken, but I thought I heard them again. They were the words of Jacob wrestling with the angel of God. “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” The painted face in the lamplight changed at each appeal. It was bright and shining, was black and gloomy; it closed pale lids over dead eyes, opened them again and flashed a burning look. It was woman, man, girl, was a little child, an animal, vanished to a speck, was again tall and clear. At last, in response to a strong inward prompting, I closed my eyes, and saw the picture inwardly in me, stronger and more powerful. I wished to kneel down before it, but it was so much within me, that I could separate it from myself no more; it seemed as if it had entirely identified itself with me. Then I heard a loud confused roar as of a spring storm. I trembled in an indescribably new feeling of fear and excitement. Stars darted before me and died out, recollections even of the first forgotten years of my childhood, of a time further back still, of a pre-existence and the early stages of existence, pressed through me. But the recollections which seemed to piece together my life’s whole history even to its most secret details did not cease with yesterday and to-day, they went farther, mirrored the future, tearing me away from to-day, changing me into new forms of life, of which the pictures were very bright and blinding. But of none of them could I call up a just image later.