An hour later Weikhardt was announced. Imhof considered whether he should see him. He had denied himself to all callers during the past few days, but he could not make up his mind to refuse to see the painter, whom he had always liked uncommonly well. “Is it Eliphaz, Bildad, or Zophar who comes to comfort Job?” he addressed Weikhardt. “You remember the incident, don’t you? ‘They lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.’” Weikhardt smiled. But when his eyes had become accustomed to the semi-darkness of the room and he saw the emaciated face, his mocking impulse fled. For a while their talk was superficial. Weikhardt told about his marriage, his work, his vain efforts after economic security, and finally gossipped a little. Imhof listened with wavering attention. Suddenly he asked with apparent equanimity: “How is that marvellous female salamander?” “What salamander? Whom do you mean?” “Whom should I mean? Sybil, of course! Wasn’t it the maddest and wildest thing that the trivial word of a soulless creature should have brought swift decision into the slow process of my fate? Was it Providence? Was it so written in the stars?” “I don’t understand,” Weikhardt murmured. “Don’t you? Didn’t you know that the horrible little wooden fay called me a ‘nigger,’ and that I revenged myself in my characteristic way by playing a trump that lost me the whole game? I went and sought the company to which her icy scorn had sent me. I slept with a Negro woman to shame the white girl and break her vanity, at least in my imagination. Wasn’t it sublime? And you didn’t know it?” “I knew of nothing,” Weikhardt murmured in astonishment. A long silence followed. Imhof continued in a changed voice. “The things that followed weren’t so different from former experiences. But the central nerve was sick and the source of life poisoned. Sometimes I’m tempted to hasten the disgustingly slow execution by a clean bullet. It’s too undignified to have death glide about you as an overfed cat circles around a trapped mouse. Or else one could do the Sardanapalus act--light fireworks and burn the house down, and make one’s exit with a grandiose gesture.” “It would be cheap and meretricious,” Weikhardt said, “you’d never forgive another for it.” “I’m not capable of it in reality. I cling desperately to the depressing rag of life that’s left. Ah, to live at all--what that means!” He bit into his pillow, and moaned: “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”