The ceaseless
uneasiness in which Angelika lived broke out into perpetual
quarrelling. For one thing, she had no self-command. A caprice, a
mistake, an anxiety over-ruled everything. She seized the smallest
opportunities. Again--and this was a most important factor--there
was her overpowering anxiety to keep possession of him; this drew
her away from what she should have paid most heed to, in order to
let him have peace. She continued her lavish housekeeping, she let
the children drift, she concentrated all her powers on him. Her
jealousy, her fears, her debts, sapped his fertile mind, destroyed
his good humour, laid desolate his love of the beautiful and his
creative power.
He had in particular one great project, which he had often, but
ineffectually, attempted to mature. The effort to do so had begun
seriously one day on the heights above Hellebergene, and had
continued the whole summer. Curiously enough, one morning, as he
sat at some most wearisome work, Hellebergene and Helene, in the
spring sunshine, rose before him, and with them his project, lofty
and smiling, came to him again. Then he begged for a little peace
in the house.
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