Prokop felt as if there was a lump of ice in his chest. This desolation was the end. Even if the door opened, and she herself were standing there, he would still say: The end! “Darling, darling,” Prokop heard her whisper, and then he burst out in desperation: “Why have you humiliated me so? If you were a chambermaid, I should forgive you your haughtiness, but as a princess you cannot be excused. Do you hear? It’s the end, the end!”
Mr. Paul opened the door: “Does the gentleman require anything?”
Prokop stopped short; he had said the last words aloud. “No, Paul. Have you any letter for me?”
Mr. Paul shook his head.
The day grew more and more oppressive; it was as if he was entangled in a horrible spider’s web. It was already evening. Then he heard some voices whispering in the passage, and Mr. Paul entered in delighted haste. “Here is a letter for you,” he whispered triumphantly, “shall I turn on the lights?”
“No.” Prokop crushed the thin envelope in his fingers and became aware of the familiar, penetrating scent; it was as if he was trying by smelling to see what was inside. The point of ice dug deeper in his heart. Why did she wait until the evening to write? Because she has nothing to say but: You mustn’t come to us this evening. All right, Princess, if it’s the end, then it’s the end. Prokop jumped up, found in the darkness a clean envelope and placed the letter inside it, unopened. “Paul, take this at once to Her Excellence.”
Scarcely had Paul left the room than Prokop wished to call him back. But it was too late and he realized painfully that what he had just done was irrevocable. Then he threw himself on the bed and stifled in the cushions something which was tearing itself out of his mouth against his will.
Mr. Krafft came in, probably as the result of an alarm from Paul, and did all he could to calm and distract his lacerated friend. Prokop ordered some whisky, drank it, and by an effort recovered himself. Mr. Kraft sipped some soda-water, and assented to everything which Prokop said, although he was agreeing to things which were in direct opposition to his glowing idealism. Prokop cursed, reproached himself, used the most coarse and crude expressions as if it relieved his feelings to besmirch everything, spit on it, trample on it and destroy it. And he overflowed with obscenities, turned women inside out and abused them in the most violent possible terms. Mr. Kraft, sweating with horror, agreed with everything which the enraged genius threw out. Then Prokop’s vehemence exhausted itself, he became silent, frowned and drank more than was good for him. Then he lay on the bed, fully dressed, rocking himself from side to side and gazing with large eyes into the swirling darkness.
The next morning he got up, calm and disgusted, and immigrated to his laboratory for good. But he did nothing but lounge about the room, kicking a sponge in front of him. Then he had an idea. He compounded a terrible and instable explosive and sent it to the office, hoping that a really dramatic catastrophe would follow. Nothing happened. Prokop threw himself on the couch and slept uninterruptedly for sixteen hours.
He awoke like another man, sober, steady and cold. He felt utterly indifferent to what had happened before he fell asleep. He again began to work assiduously and methodically on the explosive disintegration of atoms, and theoretically arrived at such terrible conclusions that his hair stood on end in horror at the nature of the forces among which we live.
Once in the middle of his calculations he was seized by a sudden feeling of restlessness. “Probably I’m tired,” he said to himself, and went out into the open air for a bit, bareheaded. Without realizing what he was doing he made his way to the castle, mechanically ran up the stairs and went along the passage to the guests’ quarters. Paul was not in his usual seat. Prokop went inside. Everything was as he had left it, but in the air was the familiar scent of the Princess. “Absurd, absurd,” thought Prokop. “Suggestion or something of the sort; I’ve been smelling the strong smells of the laboratory too long.” Nevertheless he was painfully excited.
He sat down for a moment and was surprised how far away everything was. All was quiet in the castle, the quietness of the afternoon. And yet had not something changed? He heard muffled steps in the corridor, probably those of Paul, and went outside. It was the Princess.
Surprise and what was almost horror threw her back against the wall, and she stood deathly pale, her eyes wide open, and her lips twisted as if in pain. What did she want in the guests’ wing? Perhaps she is going to Suwalski, thought Prokop suddenly, and something in him froze. He made a step forward as if he was going to throw himself upon her, but instead made a noise in his throat and ran out. Did he feel hands pulling him back? You must not look back! Away, away from here!
Only when he was a long way from the castle, in the middle of the sandy artillery ground, did he throw himself down on his face. For there is only one pain greater than that of humiliation—that of hatred. Ten yards to the side sat the serious and concentrated Mr. Holz.
The night which followed was heavy and oppressive, unusually black. There was going to be a storm. At such moments people are extraordinarily irritable and unable to control their actions.
About eleven o’clock Prokop burst out of the door of his laboratory and stunned Mr. Holz so thoroughly with a chair that he was able to escape from him into the darkness of the night. A few moments later two shots were heard from the neighbourhood of the factory station. Low
