concentrating all my will-power on my loss, I should be able through the compulsion of nature to enchant Minna to me.
It is said that a dying person is able to review, in a second, his whole life in all its main lines, as if his consciousness was already elevated above the earthly order of time. At this moment my youth died in me, and I reviewed in parting the whole course of my love, all that I have confided to these pages, and still many more half-forgotten incidents. It appeared to me that I saw it all in a flash and from above, just as I had overlooked the whole of its birthplace from the platform of Bastei. And in taking this review, one thing struck me which I had not remarked before, the fact that we had all allowed ourselves to be led and driven almost mechanically by the stream of circumstances, without striking in energetically with a "So it must be!" Even Stephensen's way of behaving, that had certainly had the appearance of spontaneity, had in its essence the same character; he had evidently given in to his jealous longing to see Minna before she was irrevocably lost, and had thought: "Let us see what I can manage. Who knows! Perhaps, after all, she will come with me."
But now? Could nothing be altered? Was there not yet time to step in with an "I will"? A marriage is not any longer an indissoluble tie, hers was an unhappy one. I knew more certainly than any words of hers could have told me that all she had hoped for was irreparably lost, that he was found out, weighed and found wanting; while he, on his part, had long since tired of her. Besides, he was, as he often enough had boasted, a man who did not share the usual prejudices, and I suppose he, least of all, would insist that an unsuccessful union could not rightly be dissolved, or that it was justifiable to bind a wife who stayed against her will. Surely the theories of liberty are not always
