Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/40

32 the curtains and oak book-cases. To Paul the room seemed demented because there was dust on the books and because the basket full of torn paper had not been emptied. But to both of them the man Ernst himself seemed more demented than the room: the man Ernst, their brother, an eccentric fellow whom for years they had been compelled to think "queer" because he was different from any of them. When he confessed to them that his room was full of souls, souls that hovered round him like a cloud until he was on the point of suffocating, souls that chained themselves to him and rattled their chains, they thought that he was raving, that he was stammering insane words. It was the view of both of them, the view of normal, healthy men, outwardly sane in their senses, in their gestures, expression and language, because their gestures, expression and language did not clash with those of the people about them, whatever they might sometimes feel deep down in themselves. But to the man himself, to Ernst, his own view was the normal, the very ordinary view; and he thought his two brothers Gerrit and Paul queer and eccentric because he was able, in his furtive way, to see that neither of them noticed anything of the innumerable souls, though these writhed so pitifully and thronged so closely around him, as though he were in purgatory. To him there was nothing mad or insane in his room, in his words, or in any part of