“Do you need dreams in order to love me, girl? I don’t; I need you just as you are. I will soon be thirty years old, Eleanore. A man never really wakes up until he is thirty; it is then that he conquers the world. You know what rests within me; you suspect it. You know too how I need you; you feel it. You are my soul; you are created out of my music; without you I am an empty hull, a patchwork, a violin without strings.” “Oh, Daniel, I believe you, and yet it is not all true,” replied Eleanore. He thought he could see in the darkness her mockingly ironical smile: “Somewhere, I am almost tempted to say in God, it is not true. If we were better, if we were beings in the image of God and acting in God’s ways, we would have to desist from our own ways. Then it would be wonderful to live: it would be like living above the clouds, happy, at peace, pure.” “Does that come from your heart, Eleanore?” “My dear, dear man! My heart, like yours, has been beclouded and bewitched. I cannot give you up. I have settled my accounts. In my soul I am entirely conscious of my guilt. I know what I am doing and assume full responsibility for my action. There is no use to struggle any longer; the water is already swirling over our heads. I simply want to say that you should not delude yourself into believing that we have risen up above other people by what we have done, that we have deserved the gratitude of fate. No, Daniel, what we are doing is precisely what all those do who fall. Let me stay with you, dearest; kiss me, kiss me to death.” V Philippina had promised Eleanore to look after Jordan and Gertrude on Sunday. As she was crossing Five Points, she went into a shop, and asked for three pfennigs’ worth of court plaster. While doing some housework she had scratched herself on a nail. The clerk gave her the plaster, and asked her what was the news. “Ah, you poor bloke, you want to know the very latest, don’t you?” she snarled, and then grinned with blatant self-complacency. “The later the better,” said the fellow with a lustful smirk. Philippina bent over the counter, and whispered: “They’re taking their wedding trip to-day.” She laughed in a lewd, imbecile way. The clerk stared at her with wide-opened eyes and mouth. Two hours later the news was in the mouth of every hussy in that section of the city. Gertrude was in bed. The day woman who did the cooking gave Philippina a plate with Jordan’s dinner on it: Meat, vegetables, and a few sour plums. Philippina ate two of the plums on the way up to his room, and licked her fingers. The whole forenoon she spent rummaging around in Eleanore’s room; she looked through the cabinets, the presses, and the pockets of Eleanore’s dresses. As it began to grow dark, Jordan suddenly entered, in hat and great coat, and looked on in speechless and enraged amazement at the girl’s inexplicable curiosity.