My very sensitive prudishness concerning everything pertaining to
my body he, rightly and to my gratitude, respected as long as possible.
But when it became clear to him that I was seized with a glowing
passion for Emmy Tenders - and he must indeed have been very deaf and
blind not to notice my very apparent confusion and perplexity, my air
of abstraction, my brightening at everything that suggested her, my
pallor, my nocturnal wanderings abroad and my agonies of weeping in bed
- he considered the time for my final enlightenment come.
Between two sensitive, proud and refined natures like my father and
myself, this was a most painful and most difficult task. But he
performed it with his customary undaunted determination. I have never
spent a more uncomfortable hour in my life. My father had brought books
and prints for better demonstration; he dared not look at me and
mumbled a good deal under his breath in a hollow voice. Beads of
perspiration stood on his brow.
When he had left the room, nervous and embarrassed as a child who has
done wrong, my first thought was: a revolver.
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