This Month's Installment
The italicized part is what I'm unsure about.
Fixed and calm, her eye lingered on his face, a quiet trembling in her voice, otherwise no agitation, only a certainty that did not let itself be shaken."You need not say anything to me; it would be pointless.""Who told it to you?""No one. I've known it the whole day. He had the train station in Malkaynen; the battle was there.""He has accomplished a great thing. The whole carriage that arrived to-day with the train is his work. He led his locomotive through the enemy fire."She turned her head."Fritz was also on his train."She said nothing."He lies wounded in Pronitten.""I knew that he would be at his post. He has died as he has lived."He said nothing in reply. Her pain was sacred for him; an empty world would have been desecration."Your brother wrote to you about it? I would like to read the letter."---176---"I have it over in my room. Come over to us now; my sister will also be there soon. A substitution for you at night has already been provided.""I am staying here. Perhaps you will be so good to send the letter over to me."He attempted an objection."I thank you. I find myself most at ease when I am doing my duty."In this moment, he had to be able to do something for her in her pain, which she took upon herself so grandly and bravely, he who knew what it was about, when he was able to destroy this strangeness that still piled up between them! Yet nothing remained for him but silence.But to Else he expressed himself. "This war also makes women into heroes; one sees it in you both.""For myself, I must refuse this designation. But in Edith, there's been something heroic all along. Now the fruits of upbringing and of education are showing themselves, above all of self-education. What is in a person and what he has trained himself to, that is what suffering makes evident."
