“Why?”
“Because I should not have had that fear of death when I wished for it all the same. The unhappiness that I need and long for is different. It is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and lust after death. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for.”
“I understand that. There we are brother and sister. But what have you got against the happiness that you have found now with Maria? Why aren’t you content?”
“I have nothing against it. Oh, no, I love it. I’m grateful for it. It is as lovely as a sunny day in a wet summer. But I suspect that it can’t last. This happiness leads to nothing either. It gives content, but content is no food for me. It lulls the Steppenwolf to sleep and satiates him. But it is not a happiness to die for.”
“So it’s necessary to be dead, Steppenwolf?”
“I think so, yes. My happiness fills me with content and I can bear it for a long while yet. But sometimes when happiness leaves a moment’s leisure to look about me and long for things, the longing I have is not to keep this happiness forever, but to suffer once again, only more beautifully and less meanly than before. I long for the sufferings that make me ready and willing to die.”
Hermine looked tenderly in my eyes with that dark look that could so suddenly come into her face. Lovely, fearful eyes! Picking her words one by one and piecing them together, and speaking slowly and so low that it was an effort to hear her, she said:
“I want to tell you something today, something that I have known for a long while, and you know it too; but perhaps you have never said it to yourself. I am going to tell you now what it is that I know about you and