... "The young swimmer had often looked back and noted with satisfaction that the master had followed him into the water. Now he peered again, but could no longer see the other man. He grew restless, peered and called out, turned around, and hurried to help him. He could no longer find him and searched for the submerged man, swimming and diving, until the bitter cold exhausted him. Staggering and breathless, he finally reached land, saw the bathrobe lying on the shore, picked it up, and began mechanically rubbing his body and limbs with it until his frozen skin warmed up again. He sat down in the sun as if numb , stared into the water, whose cool blue-green now looked back at him strangely empty, alien, and malevolent, and felt himself seized by bewilderment and deep sadness when, with the fading of his physical weakness, consciousness and the horror of what had happened returned."

Source: Hermann Hesse, Collected Poems, Volume Six, The Glass Bead Game, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1952, pp. 538f