At night he dreamed the most frightful things:  his unbridled fancy, his unoccupied creative power, took revenge, and all this weakened him.  He looked with admiration at his wife’s robust health:  she had the physique of a wild beast.  But at times their quarrels, their reconciliations, brought revelations with them:  he could perceive her sorrows as well.  She did not complain, she did not say a word, she could not do so; but at times she wept and gave way as only the most despairing can.  Her nature was powerful, and the struggle of her love beyond belief.  The beauty of the fulness of life was there, even when she was most repulsive.  The wild creature, wrestling with her destiny, often gave forth tragic gleams of light.

One day his relation, the Government Secretary, met him.  They usually avoided each other, but to-day he stopped.

“Ah, Rafael,” said the dapper little man nervously, “I was coming to see you.”

“My dear fellow, what is it?”

“Ah, I see that you guess; it is a letter from your mother.”

“From my mother?”

During all the time since her telegram they had not exchanged a word.

“A very long letter, but she makes a condition.”

“Hum, hum! a condition?”

“Yes, but do not be angry; it is not a hard one:  it is only that you are to go away from the town, wherever you like, so long as you can be quiet, and then you are to read it.”

“You know the contents?”

“I know the contents, I will go bail for it.”

What he meant, or why he was so perturbed by it, Rafael did not understand, but it infected him; if he had had the money, and if on that day he had been disengaged, he would have gone at once.  But he had not the money, not more than he wanted for the fete that evening.  He had the tickets for it in his pocket at that moment.  He had promised Angelika that he would go there with her, and he would keep his promise, for it had been given after a great reconciliation scene.  A white silk dress had been the olive branch of these last peaceful days.  She therefore looked very handsome that evening as she walked into the great hall of the Lodge, with Rafael beside her tall and stately.  She was in excellent spirits.  Her quiet eyes had a haughty expression as she turned her steps with confident superiority towards those whom she wished to please, or those whom she hoped to annoy.

He did not feel confident.  He did not like showing himself in public with her, and lately it had precisely been in public places that she had chosen to make scenes; besides which, he felt nervous as to what his mother could wish to say to him.

A short time before he came to the fete, he had tried, in two quarters, to borrow money, and each time had received only excuses.  This had greatly mortified him.  His disturbed state of mind, as is so often the case with nervous people, made him excited and boisterous, nay, even made him more than usually jovial.  And as though a little of the old happiness were actually to come to him that evening, he met his friend and relative Hans Ravn, him and his young Bavarian wife, who had just come to the town.  All three were delighted to meet.