Then he softly stroked her hand, patted it gently, in a fatherly manner:
"You are kind and nice, Constance, but," shaking his head, "you have no sense! I believe you mean what you say, but that's just it: you're narrow, you're limited. You don't see, you don't hear," putting his hand to his eyes and ears, "what I see, what I hear with my eyes and my ears. . . ."
"But, Ernst, you must surely understand that those are all illusions. The doctor says that they are hallucinations."
He continued to smile, looked at her with his contemptuous pity, looked hard out of his black Van Lowe eyes.
"They are hallucinations, Ernst."
"And you?"
"No, I'm not."
"And the room, the books, the vases? . . ."
"No, they are not. They are all around you, they exist."
"Well . . . and why not all of them, the souls?"
"They don't exist, Ernst. They are hallucinations."
He just closed his eyelids, smiled, shrugged his shoulders, to convey that he was utterly at a loss to understand such exceedingly limited perceptions. Then he said, gently and kindly:
"No, Constance dear, you're not clever . . . if
