In the short interval betweeime that I got to know Maria and the Fancy Dress Ball I was really happy; a I never had the feeling that this was my release and the attai of felicity. I had the distinct impression, rather, that all this relude and a preparation, that everything ushing eagerly forward, that the gist of the matter was to e.
I was now so profit in dang that I felt quite equal to playing my part at the Ball of which everybody was talking. Hermine had a secret. She took the greatest care not to let out what her e was to be. I would reize her soon enough, she said, and should I fail to do so, she would help me; but beforehand I was to know nothing. She was not in the least inquisitive to know my plans for a fancy dress and I decided that I should not wear a e at all. Maria, when I asked her to go with me as my partner, explaihat she had a cavalier already and a ticket too, in fact; and I saw with some disappoihat I should have to attend the festivity alo was the principal Fancy Dress Ball of the town, anized yearly by the Society of Artists in the Globe Rooms.
During these days I saw little of Hermine, but the day before the Ball she paid me a brief visit. She came for her ticket, which I had got for her, and sat quietly with me for a while in my room. We fell into a versation so remarkable that it made a deep impression on me.
"Youre really doing splendidly," she said. "Dang suits you. Anyone who hadnt seen you for the last four weeks would scarcely know you."
"Yes," I agreed. "Things havent gone so well with me for years. Thats all your doing, Hermine."
"Oh, not the beautiful Marias?"
"No. She is a present from you like all the rest. She is wonderful."
"She is just the girl you need, Steppenwolf—pretty, young, light hearted, an expert in love and not to be had every day. If you hadnt to share her with others, if she werent always merely a fleeting guest, it would be another matter."
Yes, I had to cede this too.
"And so have you really got everything you want now?"
"No, Hermi is not like that. What I have got is very beautiful and delightful, a great pleasure, a great solation. Im really happy—"
"Well then, what more do you want?"
"I do want more. I am not tent with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite."
"To be unhappy in fact? Well, youve had that and to spare, that time when you couldnt go home because of the razor."
"No, Hermi is something else. That time, I grant you, I was very unhappy. But it was a stupid unhappihat led to nothing."
"Why?"
"Because I should not have had that fear of death when I wished for it all the same. The unhappihat I need and long for is different. It is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and lust after death. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for."
"I uand that. There we are brother and sister. But what have you got against the happihat you have found now with Maria? Why arent you tent?"
"I have nothing against it. Oh, no, I love it. Im grateful for it. It is as lovely as a sunny day in a wet summer. But I suspect that it t last. This happiness leads to nothiher. It gives tent, but tent is no food for me. It lulls the Steppenwolf to sleep and satiates him. But it is not a happio die for."
"So its necessary to be dead, Steppenwolf?"
"I think so, yes. My happiness fills me with tent and I bear