He did not care for Beineberg's speculative view of the matter.

But after a while Beineberg went on: “Why do you keep on staring out of the window? What is there to be seen?”

“I'm still wondering what it can be.” But actually he had gone on to thinking about something else, which he did not want to speak of. That high tension, that harkening as if some solemn mystery might become audible, and the burden of gazing right into the midst of the still undefined relationships of things-all this was something he had been able to endure only for a moment. Then lie had once again been overcome by the sense of solitude and forlornness which always followed this excessive demand upon his resources. He felt: there's something in this that's still too difficult for me. And his thoughts took refuge in something else, which was also implicit in it all, but which, as it were, lay only in the background and biding its time: loneliness.

From the deserted garden a leaf now and then fluttered up against the lit window, tearing a streak of brightness into the darkness great future ahead of them usually go through a period abounding in humiliations.

Törless's taste for certain moods was the first hint of a psychological development that was later to manifest itself as a strong sense of wonder. The fact was that later he was to have-and indeed to be dominated by-a peculiar ability: he could not help frequently experiencing events, people, things, and even himself, in such a way as to feel that in it all there was at once some insoluble enigma and some inexplicable kinship for which he could never quite produce any evidence. Then these things would seem tangibly comprehensible, and yet he could never entirely resolve them into words and ideas. Between events and himself, indeed between his own feelings and some inmost self that craved understanding of them, there always remained a dividing-line, which receded before his desire, like a horizon, the closer he tried to come to it. Indeed, the more accurately he circumscribed his feelings with thoughts, and the more familiar they became to him, the stranger and more incomprehensible did they seem to become, in equal measure; so that it no longer even seemed as though they were retreating before him, but as though he himself were withdrawing from them, and yet without being able to shake off the illusion of coming closer to them.

This queer antithesis, which was so difficult for him to grasp, later occupied an important phase of his spiritual development; it was something that tore at his soul, as though to rend it apart, and for a long time it was his soul's chief problem and the chief threat to it.

For the present, however, the severity of these struggles was indicated only by a frequent sudden lassitude, alarming him, as it were, from a long way off, when ever some ambiguous, odd mood such as this just now-brought him a foreboding of it. Then he would seem to himself as powerless as a captive, as one who had been abandoned and shut away as much from himself as from others. At such times he could have screamed with desperation and the horror of emptiness; but instead of doing anything of the kind he would avert himself from this solemn and expectant, tormented, wearied being within himself and-still aghast at his abrupt renunciation-would begin to listen, more and more enchanted by their warm, sinful breath, to the whispering voices of his solitude.

behind it. Then the darkness seemed to shrink and withdraw, only in the next instant to advance again and stand motionless as a wall outside the window. This darkness was a world apart. It had descended upon the earth like a horde of black enemies, slaughtering or banishing human beings, or, whatever it did, blotting out all trace of them.

And it seemed to Törless that he was glad of this. At this moment he had no liking for human beings-for all who were adults. He never liked them when it was dark. He was in the habit then of cancelling them out of his thoughts. After that the world seemed to him like a sombre, empty house, and in his breast there was a sense of awe and horror, as though he must now search room after room-dark rooms where he did not know what the corners might conceal-groping his way across thresholds that no human foot would ever step on again, until-until in one room the doors would suddenly slam behind him and before him and he would stand confronting the mistress of the black hordes herself. And at the same instant the locks would snap shut in all the doors through which he had come; and only far beyond, outside the walls, would the shades of darkness stand on guard like black eunuchs, warding off any human approach.

This was his kind of loneliness since he had been left in the lurch that time-in the woods, where he had wept so bitterly. It held for him the lure of woman and of something monstrous. He felt it as a woman, but its breath was only a gasping in his chest, its face a whirling forgetfulness of all human faces, and the movements of its hands a shuddering all through his body....

He feared this fantasy, for he was aware of the perverted lust in the secrecy of it, and he was disturbed by the thought that such imaginings might gain more and more power over him. But they would overwhelm him just when he believed himself to be most serious and most pure. It happened, perhaps, as a reaction to those moments when he had an inkling of another emotional awareness, which, though it was already implicit in him, was as yet beyond his years. For there is, in the development of every fine moral energy, such an early point where it weakens the soul whose most daring experience it will perhaps be some day-just as if it had first to send down its roots, gropingly, to disturb the ground that they will afterwards hold together; and it is for this reason that boys with a

* * *

Törless suddenly proposed that they should pay and go. A look of understanding gleamed in Beineberg's eyes: he knew and shared the mood. Törless was revolted by this concord, and his dislike of Beineberg quickened again; he felt himself degraded by their having anything in common.

But that had by now practically become part of it all. Degradation is but one solitude more and yet another dark wall.

And so, without speaking to each other, they set out on a certain road.

There must have been a light shower of rain a few minutes earlier-the air was moist and heavy, a misty halo trembled round the street-lamps, and here and there the pavement glimmered.

Törless's sword clattered on the stones, and he drew it closer to his side. But there was still the sound of his heels on the pavement, and even that sent a queer shiver through him. After a while, leaving the pavements of the town behind them, they had soft ground underfoot and were walking along wide village streets towards the river. The water rolled along, black and sluggish, and with deep gurgling sounds under the wooden bridge.