"Yes, isn't it so? Such things cannot be told to a child, nor to a half-grown girl. But I am not telling you, now, only for the sake of telling you. You ask how things were when we were together. Picture him to yourself first. An unselfish, devoted nature that was very little understood, by some few perhaps, in a way, but even by them not adequately. The result was that when he believed he had found sympathy, he poured himself out so unrestrainedly that people laughed at him. If he were in company he drank, or rather was made to drink, until he was tipsy, and so let his untamable nature take the bit in its teeth. Do you know--yes, I must tell you this. At a party a lady (she is now married to the captain here) set to work to draw him out for the amusement of the others. She was very bright and witty; she appeared to be entirely carried away by him, so that she could not listen to him enough, could not question him enough, and all the while poured more and more wine into his glass. She drank with him; she made all the others drink with him."
"Do you know where it all ended? In the cowhouse. They locked him into the cowhouse by himself. His frenzy of rage brought on a nervous attack. She it was whom he saw from the window as he stood on the platform that day. It was then he became sober."
The mother and daughter walked on in silence.
"You knew nothing of all this at that time, did you, mother?--not until later?"
"No; if I had known it, I believe I should have gone straight up to him, taken him by the hand, and greeted him with all my heart."
"Since my life with him I have thought a great deal. Do you know, I believe geniuses have this characteristic of confiding impulsiveness, and therefore the people and conditions that surround them are of all the greater importance. But most important of all is it that they should have a woman's help. And, according to the nature of that help, so things go with them. Karl Mander had got into the habit of speaking in monologues. He got on best among peasants. They disturbed him least. Books, meditations, farming, bathing, and now and then an orgie, a speech, or, for preference, one on top of the other--that had been his life up to then."