To know that these eyes and their pure passion were so close to him; to be able to touch this cool, sincere, mutely-eloquent mouth with his lips; to be able to hold these hands in which passion resided as it does in the speechless unrest of a messenger; to be able to press this throbbing figure with all its willingness and hesitation to his bosom—it was almost too much for Daniel. It involved pain; it aroused an impatience, a thirst for more and more. His daily work was interrupted; his thoughts, plans, and arrangements were torn from their connection. He spoke to people whom he knew as though they were total strangers; he amazed those whom he did not know by the loyal confidence he voluntarily placed in them. He forgot to put on his hat when he walked along the street; the distraction he revealed was the source of constant merriment to passersby and on-lookers. He would not know when it was noon; he would come home at three o’clock, thinking it was twelve. Once he came nearly being run over by a team of galloping horses; another time he had his umbrella taken straight from his hands without noticing it. This took place at the Ludwig Station. “Oh, winged creature, winged creature,” he would say to himself, and smile like a somnambulist. Deep in his soul a sea of tones was surging. He listened to them with complete assurance, angry though he would become at times because of the failure of this or that. He was so absorbed in himself, so enmeshed in his own thoughts, that he scarcely saw the sky above him; houses, people, animals, and the things that are after all necessary to human existence existed only in his dreams, if at all. Winged creature, winged creature! IX As soon as Gertrude could get up and go about, Eleanore accepted an invitation from Martha Rübsam to visit her aunt, Frau Seelenfromm, in Altdorf. The visit was to last two weeks. Eleanore looked upon it as a test that would determine whether she could do anything on her own account now: whether she could get along without Daniel. But she saw that she could no longer live without him. In the lonely house she came to the conclusion that her love was great enough to enable her to bear the monstrous burden fate had been trying to impose upon her. She saw that neither flight nor concealment nor anything else could save her, could save Daniel, could give back to Gertrude what she had lost, what had been taken from her. There were times, to be sure, when she asked herself whether it was all true and real; whether it could be possible. She walked in darkness surrounded by demons. Her being was plunged into the deepest and strangest bewilderment; confusion enveloped her; there was sorrow in the effort she made to avert the inexorable. But in one of her sleepless nights she thought she was covering Daniel’s mind with a flame of fire; she thought she heard his voice calling out to her with a power she had never known before.