Mother Eve was often present when such conversations took place, but she did not join in. For each of us who chose to express his thoughts she was as it were a listener and an echo, full of confidence, full of understanding. It appeared as if our ideas all emanated from her and returned to her again. My happiness consisted in sitting near her, in hearing her voice from time to time, and in participating in that atmosphere of maturity and of the soul, which surrounded her.

She felt immediately when a change was taking place in me, when my soul was troubled, or when a renewal was in progress. It seemed to me as if the dreams I had in my sleep were inspired by her. I often related them to her. She found them quite comprehensible and natural, there were no peculiarities which she could not follow clearly. For a time I had dreams which were like reproductions of the day’s conversation. I dreamed that the whole world was in revolt, and that I, alone or with Demian, tensely waited the signal of fate. Fate remained half concealed, but bore somehow or other the traits of Mother Eve⁠—to be chosen or rejected by her, that was fate.

Sometimes she said with a smile: “Your dream is not complete, Sinclair, you have forgotten the best part”⁠—and it sometimes happened that I recalled it then, and I could not understand how I had come to forget any of it.

At times I was discontented and was tormented by desire, I thought I could not bear to see her near me any longer without taking her in my arms. She noticed that immediately. Once, when I had stayed away for several days and had returned distraught, she took me aside and said: “You should not give yourself up to wishes in which you do not believe, I know what you wish. You must give up these desires, or else surrender yourself to them completely. If one day you are able to ask, convinced that your wishes will be fulfilled, then you will find satisfaction. But you wish, and repent again, and are afraid. You must overcome all that. I will tell you a fairytale.”