But it seemed to her, as she lay there and brooded and let her flesh disintegrate, as though her lost earth and lost heaven were given back to her in every single pearl and in the whole string. Everything was in the pearls--the children she had conceived and born and lost in hatred, the poverty-stricken, all but unfulfilled dreams, the longing she had faintly felt for some human being, the wizened love, the jaded light, the petty hopes, the small delight. Everything crystallized in the pearls and became a soul. All that she had missed and gambled or thrown away or never reached, all that had been darkened for her or driven from her by want and sorrow--all this became a soul. And to this soul she was immeasurably devoted as she lay there and brooded and let her flesh disintegrate. For this soul was the soul of Christian. His soul was in the rope of pearls. It was this that she grasped and clung to, and wanted to possess even in her grave. Her blue eyes, under the narrow forehead and the strawy dishevelled hair, had the fetish-worshipper’s glow. VIII The widow Engelschall’s first concern was to get the women out of Karen’s room. To succeed she had to make her command abundantly clear. She hissed at the Schirmacher girl: “Would you mind taking your snub-nose out of this here place?” Isolde went, but she felt sure that the old woman had evil intentions. When the widow Engelschall approached the bed, she saw that there was but just time for her to use the last glimmer of her daughter’s consciousness. If she had miscalculated--well, no harm was done, and she would be the first one, at all events, to have access to the dead woman’s body. Only there must be no shilly-shallying. She began to talk. She sat down on a chair, bent far over toward Karen, and spoke in a raised voice so that no word should escape the dying woman. She said that she had meant to bring along some pastry, but the pastry-cook’s shop had been closed. In the evening, however, she intended to boil a chicken in rice or make a Styrian pudding with apple-sauce. That refreshed the stomach and improved the digestion. Sick people needed strengthening food, and one mustn’t be stingy with them. Stinginess, she declared, had never been a fault of hers, anyhow. No one could say that. And she had always been ready to do the right thing by her children. It had been toil and trouble enough, and she hadn’t counted on gratitude. You didn’t get that in this world anyhow, no more from your children than from Tom, Dick, or Harry.