other, you see.  My wife had a nervous tendency which these births brought to a crisis.  After the very first child was born, she had an attack of profound melancholia.  Her mother had to admit that Angele had been subject to similar attacks from childhood up.  After the last child was born, I took her on a two months’ trip in Italy.  It was a lovely time, and her spirits actually seemed to brighten under the happy sky of Italy.  But her sickness progressed below the surface.  I am thirty-one years old and have been married eight years.  My oldest boy is seven years old.  It is now”—­Frederick reflected a few moments—­“it is now the beginning of February.  It was about the middle of October last fall when I found my wife in her room slashing to tiny bits a piece of not exactly inexpensive silk which we had bought in Zuerich and which had been lying in her drawer more than four years.  I can still see the costly red stuff, that is, as much of it as had not been cut, and a loose mountain of patches lying on the floor.  I said, ’Angele, what are you doing?’ And then I took in the situation.  Nevertheless, I cherished hopes for a time.  But one night I awoke and saw my wife’s face close above me with a ghastly far-away look in it.  At the same time I felt something at my throat.  It was the very pair of scissors with which she had cut the red silk.  ‘Come, Frederick,’ she said, ’get up and dress.  We must both go to sleep in a coffin of linden-wood.’  It was high time to tell her relatives and mine and convoke a family council.  I might have protected myself, but it was dangerous for the children.

“So you see,” Frederick concluded, “it was not very far along the road of marriage that I travelled with my talent for life.  I want everything and nothing.  I can do everything and nothing.  My mind has been over-loaded, and yet has remained empty.”

“You certainly did go through a hard time,” said Miss Burns simply.

“Yes,” said Frederick, “you are right, but only if you use the present tense instead of the past and if you fully gauge the extent to which the trouble with my wife has been complicated for me.  The question is, am I to blame for the course that my wife’s mental suffering took, or may I acquit myself of all blame?  All I can say is, that the suit in this case, in which I myself am plaintiff, defendant and judge, is still pending, and no definite decision has yet been rendered.

“Now, Miss Burns, do you see any sense in the Atlantic Ocean’s having refused to take me of all the persons on board the Roland?  Do you see any sense in my having fought like a madman for my mere existence?  Do you see any sense in my having struck some unfortunate creatures over the head with my oars because they nearly capsized our boat?  I struck them so hard that they sank back in the water without a sound and disappeared.  Isn’t it vile that I still cling to life and that I would rather do anything than give up this botched and bungled existence of mine?”