The door to the room in which Karen had died was locked. A feeble fire of wood that Isolde Schirmacher had lit at Christian’s bidding burned in the oven. She came in now, put on another log, and tripped out again. Johanna sat on the sofa and looked about her expectantly. She trembled at the thought of the first word she would hear and the first she would speak. She had not taken off her cloak. Her neck and chin were buried in its collar of fur. “It’s a little uncanny here,” she said softly at last, since Christian’s silence was so prolonged. Christian sat down beside and took her hand. “You look so full of suffering, Johanna,” he said. “What is the cause of your suffering? Would it ease you to speak out? Tell me about it. You will reply that I cannot help you. And that is true; one can never really help another. Yet once you communicate yourself to a friend, the troubles within no longer rot in dull stagnation. Don’t you think so?” “You come to me so late,” Johanna whispered, with a shudder, and drew up her shoulders, “so very, very late.” “Too late?” “Too late.” Christian reflected sadly for a little. He grasped her hand more firmly, and asked timidly: “Does he torment you? What is there between him and you?” She started and stared at him, and then collapsed again. She smiled morbidly and said: “I’d be grateful to anyone who took an axe and killed me. It’s all I’m worth.” “Why, Johanna?” “Because I threw myself away to roll in filth where it’s thickest and most horrible,” she cried out, in a cutting voice that was full of lamentation too, while her lips quivered, and she looked up. “You see both yourself and others falsely,” said Christian. “Everything within you is distorted. All that you say torments you, and all that you hide chokes you. Have a little pity on yourself.” “On myself?” She laughed a mirthless laugh. “On a thing like myself? It would be waste. Nothing is needed but the axe, the axe.” Her words changed to a wild sob. Then came an icy silence. “What did you do, Johanna, to make you so desperate? Or what was done to you?” “You come too late. Oh, if you had asked me before, just asked, just once. It is too late. There was too much empty time. The time was the ruin of me. I’ve wasted my heart.” “Tell me how.” “Once there was one who opened the dark and heavy portal just a tiny bit. Then I thought: it will be beautiful now. But he slammed the door shut in my face. And the crash--I still feel it in my bones. It was rash and foolish in me. I should not have had that glimpse of the lovely things beyond the gate.” “You are right, Johanna; I deserve it. But tell me how it is with you now? Why are you so torn and perturbed?”