In the night Daniel became very much excited. He left the house, and,
despite the darkness and the snow storm, wandered out to the country
quite unmindful of the cold and snow and the wind.
He listened to the whisperings of his soul; he took council with
himself. He looked up at the great black vaulted arch of heaven as
though he were beseeching the powers above to send him the light he felt
he needed. The morning of the approaching day seemed bleaker, blacker to
him than the night that was passing. He was lost in anxiety: he went
over to his graves.
He did not stop to think until well on his way that the gate to the
cemetery would be closed; but he kept on going. He looked around for a
place in the wall where he might climb over. Finally he found one,
climbed up, scratched his hands painfully, leaped down into some
snow-covered hedges, and then wandered around with his burden of grief
over the stormy, desolate field of the dead. As he stood before
Gertrude's grave he was overwhelmed with the feeling of the hour: there
were voices in the storm; he felt that the horror and the memory of it
all would hurl him to the ground. But when he stood by the grave of
Eleanore, he felt his peace return. The clouds suddenly opened on the
distant horizon, and a moonbeam danced about him.
It was almost morning when he reached home.
A week later he went over to Siegmundshof and got Dorothea.
Sylvia and Dorothea came down through a snow-covered alley to meet him.
They were walking arm in arm, and Sylvia was laughing at Dorothea's
easy-flowing conversation. They seemed to be getting along perfectly
together: there could be no mistaking the picture he saw before him.
Sylvia told Daniel when she was alone with him that she had taken a
great liking to Dorothea. She remarked that her cheerfulness was
irresistible and contagious, and that when she was with children she
became a child herself.
Yet, despite all this, Sylvia studied Daniel. And when Dorothea was
present she studied her too: she cast fleeting, searching, unassured
glances at them--at Daniel and at Dorothea.
Daniel and Dorothea were married on a sunny day in December.