drank in his words with the complete devotion of a believer, and the beautiful girl, half lying down, received them with tender shudderings of her body. But the other faces gaped at him unsympathetically, inquiringly, or with increasing indifference. Why exactly was he talking to them?
“I have lived through,” he continued hesitatingly and already somewhat irritated, “I have lived through . . . as much as a man can live through. Why am I telling you this? Because that alone is not enough for me, because . . . so far I am not redeemed; the highest was not in it. That’s . . . buried in a man like energy in matter. You must disturb matter to make it release its force. You must free man, disturb him, split him up for him to flame up to his highest. Ah, that would . . . that would be too much . . . for him not to find that . . . he had reached . . . that. . .”
He began to stammer, became morose, threw down the box containing the Krakatit and sat down.
