"Yes, how can you tell? A person who tells lies cannot be believed."
He continued: "Nobody can expect me to make such a woman the mother of my children. My sense of duty to society is too strong." With this, he turned round and, stooping over the trunk that stood open, he began to fill it with his things.
Behind him he could hear the father who was now really sobbing—and Diederich could not help feeling moved himself by the manly noble sentiments which he had expressed, by the unhappiness of Agnes and her father which his duty forbade him to alleviate, by the painful memory of his love and this tragic fate. … His heart almost stopped beating as he listened to Herr Göppel opening and closing the door, creeping along the passage, and as he heard the noise of the street door closing behind him. Now it was all over—then Diederich fell on his knees and wept passionately into his half-packed trunk. That evening he played Schubert.
That was a sufficient concession to sentiment. He must be strong. Diederich speculated as to whether Wiebel had ever become so sentimental. Even a common fellow like Mahlmann, without manners, had given Diederich a lesson in ruthless energy. It seemed to him almost unlikely that any of the others had still perhaps some soft spots left in them. He alone was so afflicted by the influence of his mother. A girl like Agnes, who was just as foolish as his mother, would have rendered him unfit for these difficult times. These difficult times, the phrase always reminded Diederich of Unter den Linden with its mob of unemployed, women and children, of want and fear and disorder—and all that quelled, tamed into cheering, by the power, the all-embracing superhuman power, massive and flashing, which seemed to place its hoofs upon those heads.
"It can't be helped," he said to himself in an ecstasy of
