Every time Eleanore looked at Daniel her heart was filled with the same anxiety. She did not understand him; she could not comprehend a single one of his movements. Such joy as she had arose from meditation on the past. He did not seem to be able to recall her. One word, any word, from him would have relieved her of her anguish; but he spoke to her precisely as he spoke to Philippina or to Frau Kütt, the woman who came in to do the housework. It was bad enough to live with Philippina, to feel the incessant hatred of this secretive person; to suspect that she knew things that would not stand the light of day. But to see the child handed over to her, treated by her as though it were her own and guarded by her with a jealousy that made her face wrinkle with rage if Eleanore presumed to stay with it for as much as five minutes, this was infinitely worse. It was bad enough to have to accept with filial obedience the society of the speechless old father who spent his days and nights in his own mysterious way, striving without peace of any kind to reach an unknown goal. This made it hard for Eleanore. It was spooky in the rooms upstairs, and equally spooky in the ones downstairs. Eleanore dreaded the coming winter. At times she felt that her own voice had an unreal sound, and that her most commonplace remark echoed with the gloom of unhappy premonitions. She sought refuge in the old pictures of her longings—southern landscapes with groves and statues and a sea of supernatural blue. But she was too mature to find enduring satisfaction in empty dreams; she preferred, and felt it were better, to forget her grief in the distractions of hard work. It was not until the pen fell from her hand, weighed down with distress at the thought of so many unadorned and unrelieved hours, that something drew her back into the realm of spirits and visions. And then it was that she sought support, that she endeavoured to get a footing, in the world of actual objects round about her. She would take a pear, and think herself, so to speak, into the very heart of this bit of fruit, just as if it were possible to find protection, shelter in so small a space. Or she would take a piece of coloured glass, hold it in her hand, and look at the world of reality about her, hoping that the commonplace would in this way be made to seem more beautiful. Or she looked into the burning fire, and studied, with a smile on her face, the romantic tongues of flames. Or she had a longing to look at old pictures: she went to the Germanic Museum, and spent an entire morning there, standing before a Crucifixion, a Last Supper, her eye and her heart filled with flowing emotion.