She sank down on the sofa, head buried in the bilious cushions. She lay there like an animal, he thought, or some one mad, a lump of half-humanity. On one side of him Bertha lay quite motionless and silent, and on the other the little avenue was equally still. The false stillness within, however, now gave back to the scene without its habitual character. It still seemed strange to him. But all its strangeness now lay in its everyday and natural appearance. The quiet inside, in the room, was what did not seem strange to him. He had become imbued with that. Bertha’s numb silence and abandon was a stupid _tableau vivant_ of his own mood. In this impasse of arrested life he stood sick and useless. They progressed from stage to stage of this weary farce. Confusion increased. It resembled a combat between two wrestlers of mathematically equal strength. Neither could win. One or other of them was usually wallowing warily or lifelessly on his stomach, the other tugging at him or examining and prodding his carcass. His liking, contempt, realization of her love for him, his confused but exigent conscience, dogged preparation to say farewell, all dovetailed with precision. There she lay a deadweight. He could take his hat and go. But once gone in this manner he could not stay. He turned round, and sitting on the window-sill began again staring at Bertha. Women’s stormy weakness, psychic discharges, always affected him as the sight of a person being seasick. It was the result of a weak spirit, as the other was the result of a weak stomach. They could only live on the retching seas of their troubles on the condition of being quite empty. The lack of art or illusion in actual life enables the sensitive man to exist. Likewise the phenomenal lack of nature in the average man’s existence is lucky and necessary for him. Tarr in some way gathered strength from contemplation of Bertha. His contradictory and dislocated feelings were brought into a new synthesis. Launching himself off the window-sill, he stood still as though suspended in thought. He then sat down provisionally at the writing-table, within a few feet of the sofa. He took up a book of Goethe’s poems that she had given him. In cumbrous field-day dress of Gothic characters, squad after squad, these poems paraded their message. He had left it there on a former visit. He came to the ode named “Ganymed,” _Wie im Morgenglanze_ _Du rings much anglühst_ _Frühling, Geliebter!_ _Mit tausendfacher Liebeswonne_ _Sich an mein Herz drängt_ _Deiner ewigen Wärme_ _Heilig, Gefühl,_ _Unendliche Schöne!_ He put it in his breast-pocket. As soldiers go into battle sometimes with the Bible in their pocket, he prepared himself for a final combat, with Goethe upon his person. Men’s lives have been known to have been saved through a lesser devoutness.