As he looked from one to the other, and listened, without listening, to the rising torrent of Gerda’s wild words, he felt that it was absolutely impossible for him to take wholeheartedly one side or the other. He felt not only inert and helpless; but he felt as if he were himself torn into two halves by their struggle. He felt as if he incarnated at the same time his mother’s ironic detachment and his girl’s passionate grievance. All the long nights he had lain by Gerda’s side, all their sweet, secret caresses, clung, like a portion of life itself, to what he felt then for that young, troubled face under the watchet-blue ribbons. But in his mangled bifurcated identity it was impossible to feel hostile to the other figure. Longer nights with him had been hers, and closer caresses! How could he, for all the sweetness of his companion’s body, turn away from the flesh that was his own flesh?

Reason? Justice? The forces that victimized and paralyzed him now were those that had created the world. Who was he to contend against them?

Gerda came to a pause at last, and without a word to either of them walked off towards the school-treat field.