Oh, how the twilight was gathering, oh, how it was gathering around him! It was dark now, quite dark; and the fire on the hearth was dying out in the dark, shadowy room. But what was the use of making it blaze up: did the room not always remain shiveringly cold, however much the fire might glow? What was the use of lighting lamps: was the twilight not deeper and gloomier day by day, whether it were morning or evening? Did not the pale gold of the dawn shimmer more and more vaguely through the dense mist of twilight? . . . A dull, apathetic, feeble man. . . . Had he kept his secret all his life, concealed the real condition of his body and his soul, to become like that? And yet was he not Ernst's brother? Had he not always been Ernst's brother . . . though it had always seemed otherwise? Were they not of the same blood and had not they, the brothers, the same soul, the same darkened soul? Was the darkness not gathering around all of them now, the sombre twilight of their small lives? . . . Would the darkness one day close in upon his own pale-golden dawn: his children, who also shared the same soul? . . . It might be the darkness of old age as it closed in
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