Eleanore stepped out on the balcony. “The world is beautiful,” she thought, and smiled at the fruitless efforts of a tiny beetle to climb up a perpendicular leaf. “Perhaps it was after all merely a dream,” she thought, and thereby consoled herself. When she returned, Daniel was at her father’s. The two men were sitting in the dark. Eleanore lighted the lamp. Then she filled a glass with water, and put the lilies of the valley in it. “Daniel wants to know why you never visit them any more,” said Jordan, weak and distraught as he now always was. “I told him you were busy at present with great plans of your own. Well, what does the Frenchman think about it?” Eleanore answered her father’s question in a half audible voice. “Go wherever you want to go, child,” said Jordan. “You have been prepared for an independent life in the world for a long while; there is no doubt about that. God forbid that I should put any hindrances in your way.” He got up with difficulty, and turned toward the door of his room. Taking hold of the latch, he stopped, and continued in his brooding way: “It is peculiar that a man can die by inches in a living body; that a man can have the feeling that he’s no longer a part of the present; and that he can no longer play his rôle, keep up with his own people, grasp what is going on about him, or know whether what is to come is good or evil. It is fearful when a man reaches that stage, fearful—fearful!” He left the room, shaking his head. To Daniel his words sounded like a voice from the grave. They had been silent for a long while, he and Eleanore. Suddenly he asked gruffly: “Are you serious about going to Paris?” “Of course I am,” she said, “what else can I do?” He sprang up, and looked angrily into her face: “One has to be ashamed of one’s self,” he said, “human language becomes repulsive. Don’t you have a feeling of horror when you think? Don’t you shudder when you reflect on that caricature known as the heart, or the soul, or whatever it may be called?” “I don’t understand you, Daniel,” said Eleanore. She would never have considered it possible that he would look with disfavour on her contrition and the decision that had sprung from it. Then it had not after all been the flash of a solitary second? Had she not hoped and expected to hear a self-accusation from him that would make her forget all and forgive herself? Where was she? In what world or age was she living? “Do you believe that I merely wanted to enjoy a diverting and momentary side-step?” Daniel continued, measuring her with his eyes from head to foot. “Do you believe that it is possible to jest with the most sacred laws of nature? You have had a good schooling, I must say; you do your teachers honour. Go! I don’t need you. Go to Paris, and let me degenerate!”