And the old man in the blue coat?  Has he in his blindness no suspicion of the clouds that are piling up all about his house?  Or is it such a suspicion that grips him at times when, meeting Apollonius, he exchanges indifferent words with him?  Then two powers strive on his brow which his son, confronted by the shield over his father’s eyes, does not see.  He wants to ask something but he does not ask.  So thick is the cloud that the old man has spun about him like a cocoon that there is no longer any way through it from him out into the world nor any, leading from outside in to him.  He behaves as if he knew about everything.  If he did not do so, he would show the world his helplessness and himself challenge it to abuse this helplessness.  And if he should ask would people tell him the truth?  No!  He believes the world to be as obdurate toward him as he is toward it.  He does not ask.  He listens where he knows he is not seen listening, straining feverishly to catch every sound.  And in every sound he hears something that is not there; his strained imagination builds boulders of it that crush his breast, but he does not ask.  He dreams of nothing but of things that bring disgrace on him and his house.

It is the nature of guilt that it entangles not alone its author in new guilt.  It has the magic power of drawing into its fermenting circle all who surround him and of ripening in him whatever is bad to fresh guilt.  Well for him who successfully defends his unblemished heart against this magic power!  Even if he cannot save the guilty one himself, he may be an angel to the others.  Here are these four human beings with all their differences of individuality, held together in one knot of life which is being consumed by the guilt of one!  What destiny will they spin for themselves, the people in the house with the green shutters?

Weeks had now passed since Apollonius’ return and still he had not realized his sister-in-law’s fears.  During the first few days Fritz Nettenmair read in her demeanor a convulsive effort to pull herself together, a desperate endeavor to be prepared; now this gave way to something that appeared to be amazement.  He, and he alone, saw how she began to observe his brother more and more courageously when he did not suspect that her gaze rested upon him.  She seemed to be comparing his personality, his behavior with her expectation.  Fritz Nettenmair felt in her soul how little the two agreed.  He took pains to nurse his young wife’s dislike of her brother-in-law back to its old strength.  He did so, feeling all the time how vain his effort was; for a single glance at his brother’s gentle, upright countenance must tear down what it had taken him days laboriously to build up.  He felt how delicately he ought to go to work and how roughly he really did so; for the same power that sharpened his feeling for the degree carried him beyond it as soon as he came to act.  He knew that what he had begun must complete its course to his ruin.  He sought forgetfulness and drew his wife ever deeper with him into the whirlpool of diversion.