During these days I saw little of Hermine, but the day before the Ball she paid me a brief visit. She came for her ticket, which I had got for her, and sat quietly with me for a while in my room. We fell into a conversation so remarkable that it made a deep impression on me.
“You’re really doing splendidly,” she said. “Dancing suits you. Anyone who hadn’t seen you for the last four weeks would scarcely know you.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Things haven’t gone so well with me for years. That’s all your doing, Hermine.”
“Oh, not the beautiful Maria’s?”
“No. She is a present from you like all the rest. She is wonderful.”
“She is just the girl you need, Steppenwolf—pretty, young, light hearted, an expert in love and not to be had every day. If you hadn’t to share her with others, if she weren’t always merely a fleeting guest, it would be another matter.”
Yes, I had to concede this too.
“And so have you really got everything you want now?”
“No, Hermine. It is not like that. What I have got is very beautiful and delightful, a great pleasure, a great consolation. I’m really happy—”
“Well then, what more do you want?”
“I do want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite.”
“To be unhappy in fact? Well, you’ve had that and to spare, that time when you couldn’t go home because of the razor.”
“No, Hermine, it is something else. That time, I grant you, I was very unhappy. But it was a stupid unhappiness that led to nothing.”