which we fled! We went right down the winding stairs, across the
immense Rittersaal to a little terrace that overlooks the Lahn, the
broad valley and the immense plain into which it opens out.

"Don't you see?" she said, "don't you see what's going on?" The
panic again stopped my heart. I muttered, I stuttered--I don't know
how I got the words out:

"No! What's the matter? Whatever's the matter?"

She looked me straight in the eyes; and for a moment I had the
feeling that those two blue discs were immense, were
overwhelming, were like a wall of blue that shut me off from the
rest of the world. I know it sounds absurd; but that is what it did
feel like.

"Don't you see," she said, with a really horrible bitterness, with a
really horrible lamentation in her voice, "Don't you see that that's
the cause of the whole miserable affair; of the whole sorrow of the
world? And of the eternal damnation of you and me and them. . .
."

I don't remember how she went on; I was too frightened; I was too
amazed. I think I was thinking of running to fetch assistance--a
doctor, perhaps, or Captain Ashburnham. Or possibly she needed
Florence's tender care, though, of course, it would have been very
bad for Florence's heart. But I know that when I came out of it she
was saying: "Oh, where are all the bright, happy, innocent beings
in the world? Where's happiness? One reads of it in books!"