keep hold of all that glow of colour, that
wonderful effect of tone that revealed itself to her delighted eyes on
her canvas.

She was so eager that she went out with her painting materials in
the morning, whether it was at Capri, on the shores of the blue
Bosphorus, in the yellow sand of the desert, facing the precipitous
pinnacles in the Fjords, or in the rose gardens of the Riviera. Her
delicate face got sunburnt; she no longer even paid any attention to
her hands, which she used to take such care of. The ardent longing to
manifest herself had seized hold of her. Thank God, she could
create something now. The miserable feeling of a useless life did not
exist any longer, nor the torturing knowledge: your life ceases the
moment your eyes close, there is nothing of you that will survive you.
Now she would at least leave something behind that she had produced,
even if it were only a picture. Her paintings increased in number;
quite a quantity of rolls of canvas were dragged about now wherever
they went.

At first Paul Schlieben was very pleased to see his wife so
enthusiastic. He politely carried her camp-stool and easel for her, and
never lost patience when he remained for hours and hours near her
whilst she worked. He lay in the scanty shadow of a palm-tree, and used
to follow the movements of her brush over the top of his book. How
fortunate that her art gave her so much satisfaction. Even though it
was a little fatiguing for him to lie about doing nothing he must not
say anything, no, he must not, for he had nothing to offer her as a
compensation, nothing whatever. And he sighed. It was the same sigh
that had escaped him when the numerous flaxen-haired little children
were playing about on the sandy roads in the Brandenburg March, the
same sigh which Sundays drew from him, when he used to see all
the proletariat of the town--man and wife and children, children,
children--wandering to the Zoo. Yes, he was right--he passed his hand a
little nervously across his forehead--that writer was right--now, who
could it be?--who had once said somewhere: "Why does a man marry? Only
to have children, heirs of his body, of his blood. Children to whom he
can pass on the wishes and hopes that are in him and also the
achievements; children who are descended from him like shoots from a
tree, children who enable a man to live eternally." That was the only
way in which life after death could be understood--life eternal.
The resurrec