. He was no coward, but he knew he was defenceless here. By comparison with those big fists his dainty sword was a mockery. And apart from that, the disgrace and the punishment that would follow! There would be nothing for it but to run, or to plead for mercy. Or to let himself be protected by Bozena. The thought went shuddering through him. But that was it! That was just it! Nothing else! This fear, this self-abandonment, was what seduced him anew every time. This stepping out of his privileged position and going among common people-among them? no, lower than them!

He was not vicious. When it came to the point his repugnance always had the upper hand, and together with it his fear of possible consequences. It was only his imagination that had taken an unhealthy turn. When the days of the week began to lay themselves, leaden, one by one, upon his life, these searing lures began to work upon him. The memories of these visits gradually took on the character of a peculiar temptation. Bozena appeared to him as a creature of monstrous degradation, and his relationship to her, with the sensations it evoked in him, was like a cruel rite of self-sacrifice. It fascinated him to have to break the bounds of his ordinary life, leaving behind his privileged position, the ideas and feelings with which he was, as it were, being injected, all those things that gave him nothing and only oppressed him. It fascinated him to throw everything to the winds and, shorn of it all, to go racing off crazily and take his refuge with this woman.

This was no different from the way it is with such young people generally. Had Bozena been pure and beautiful and had he been capable of love at that time, he would perhaps have sunk his teeth in her flesh, so heightening their lust to the pitch of pain. For the awakening boy's first passion is not love for the one, but hatred for all. The feeling of not being understood and of not understanding the world is no mere accompaniment of first passion, but its sole non-accidental cause. And the passion itself is a panic-stricken flight in which being together with the other means only a doubled solitude.

Almost every first passion is of short duration and leaves a bitter after-taste. It is a mistake, a disappointment. Afterwards one cannot understand how one could ever have felt it, and does not know what to blame for it all. That is because the characters in this drama are to a large extent accidental to each other: chance companions on some wild flight. When everything has calmed down, they no longer recognise each other. They become aware of discordant elements in each other, since they are no longer aware of any concord.

With Törless it was different only because he was alone. The aging and degraded prostitute could not release all the forces in him. Yet she was woman enough to, as it were, bring to the surface, prematurely, particles of his innermost being, of all that still lay dormant in him waiting for the moment of fulfillment.

Such, then, were his weird imaginings and fantastic temptations. But at times he was almost as ready to fling himself on the ground, screaming with desperation.

* * *

Bozena was still taking no notice of Törless. She seemed to be behaving in this way out of spite, merely in order to annoy him. Suddenly she broke the talk off by saying: “Give me some money, you boys, I'll fetch tea and gin.”

Törless gave her one of the silver coins that had been a present from his mother that afternoon.

She took a battered spirit-lamp from the window-sill and lit it. Then she went out, slowly shuffling down the stairs.

Beineberg nudged Törless.