One morning she knelt before the altar in unusually heart-rending despair. She thought she heard a small voice crying out to her and telling her to take her life. She swooned; people rushed up to her, and wet her forehead with cold water. This enabled her to get up and go home. A peculiarly sorrowful and dreamy expression lay on her face. She wanted to do some knitting, for she recalled that when she was a girl she was always able to dispel care and grief by knitting. But every stitch she made turned into the cry: “You must take your life.” She knelt down by the cradle of little Agnes, but the child said to her only too distinctly: “Mother, you must take your life.” Eleanore came in. On her brow was the light of enjoyed happiness; her whole body was happiness; her lips trembled and twitched with happiness. But her eyes said. “Sister, you must take your life.” Philippina stood by the kitchen stove, and whispered to the coals: “Gertrude, you must take your life.” Her father came in, got his dinner, expressed his thanks for it, and went out murmuring, “Daughter, you must take your life; believe me, it will be for the best.” If she passed by the well, something drew her to the edge; voices called to her from the depths. From every beaker she put to her lips to drink shone forth her image as if from beyond the tomb. On Sunday she climbed up the Vestner Tower, and let her eyes roam over the plains below as if in the grief of departure. She leaned forward out of the little window with a feeling of assuaging horror. The keeper, seeing what she was doing, rushed up, seized her arms, and made her get back. If the cock crew, it was the crow of death; if the clock ticked, it was the tick of death; if the wind blew, it was a breath from beyond the grave. “You must take your life”—with this thought the air, the earth, the house, the church, the morning, the evening, and her dreams were full. In April Eleanore was taken down with fever. Gertrude watched by her bedside night and day; she sacrificed herself. Daniel, worried about Eleanore, went around in a dazed condition. When he came to her bed he never noticed Gertrude. After Eleanore had begun to recover, Gertrude lay down; for she was very tired. But she could not sleep; she got up again. She went into the kitchen in her bare feet, though she did not know why she went. It was the consuming restlessness of her heart that drove her from her bed. Her legs were heavy with exhaustion, but she did not like to stay in any one place for any length of time. Later Daniel came back from the city, and brought her a silver buckle which he fastened to her bracelet. Then he pressed his lips to her forehead, and said: “I thank you for having been so good to Eleanore.”