“Everything in the house goes on in the usual way, but all are perplexed and look at me inquiringly and reproachfully, considering me to be the cause of it all. And in me the same struggle still continues: anger that she is torturing me, and anxiety for her.

“At about eleven in the morning her sister arrives as her envoy. And the usual talk begins. ‘She is in a terrible state. What does it all mean?’ ‘After all, nothing has happened.’ I speak of her impossible character and say that I have not done anything.

“ ‘But, you know, it can’t go on like this,’ says her sister.

“ ‘It’s all her doing and not mine,’ I say. ‘I won’t take the first step. If it means separation, let it be separation.’