Chapter VIII (2)

"Won? Does it ever happen that any one wins? One only argues to convince oneself, never to convince the other person. Just imagine Therese eventually realising that a rational person can never become a member of any party! Or if I had been driven to confess that my independence of party betokened a lack of philosophy of life, as she contended! Why, we could both have shut up shop straight away. But what do you think of all this talk about a philosophy of life? As though a philosophy of life were anything else than the will and the capacity to see life as it really is. I mean, to envisage it without being led astray by any preconceived idea, without having the impulse to deduce a new law straight away from our particular experience, or to fit our experience into some existing law. But people mean nothing more by the expression 'philosophy of life' than a higher kind of devotion to a pet theory, devotion to a pet theory within the sphere of the infinite, so to speak. Or they go on talking about a gloomy or cheerful philosophy according to the colours in which their individual temperament and the accidents of their personal life happen to paint the world for them. People in the full possession of their senses have a philosophy of life and narrow-minded people haven't. That's how the matter stands. As a matter of fact, one doesn't need to be a metaphysician to have a philosophy of life.... Perhaps in fact one shouldn't be one at all. At any rate, metaphysics have nothing at all to do with the philosophy of life. Each of the philosophers really knew in his heart of hearts that he simply represented a kind of poet. Kant believed in the Thing In Itself, and Schopenhauer in the World as Will and Representation, just like Shakespeare believed in Hamlet, and Beethoven in the Ninth Symphony. They knew that another work of art had come into the world, but they never imagined for a single minute that they had discovered a final 'truth.' Every philosophical system, if it has any rhythm or depth, represents another possession for the world. But why should it alter a man's relationship to the world if he himself has all his wits and senses about him?" He went on speaking with increasing excitement and fell, as it seemed to George, into a feverish maze. George then remembered that Heinrich had once invented a merry-go-round that turned in spirals higher and higher above the earth, to end finally in the top of a tower.

They chose a way through suburban streets, with few people and only moderate lighting. George felt as though he were walking about in a strange town. Suddenly a house appeared that was strangely familiar to him, and he now noticed for the first time that they were passing the house of the Rosner family. There were lights in the dining-room. Probably the old man was sitting there alone, or in the company of his son. Is it possible, thought George, that in a few weeks Anna will be sitting there again at the same table as her mother and father and brother as though nothing had happened? That she will sleep again night after night behind that window with its closed blinds and leave that house day after day to give her wretched lessons.... That she will take up that miserable life again as though nothing at all had changed? No. She should not go back to her family. It would be quite senseless. She must come to him, live with him, the man she belonged to. The Detmold telegram! He had almost forgotten it, but he must talk it over with her. It showed hope and prospects. Living was cheap in a little town like that. Besides, George's own fortune was a long way from being eaten up. One would be justified in chancing it. Besides, this post simply represented the beginning. Perhaps he would get another one soon in a larger town. In a single night one might be a success without expecting it--that was always the way--and one would have a name, not only as a conductor, but also as a composer, and it need only be two or three years before they could have the child with them.... The child ... how the thought raged through his brain!... To think of one being able to forget a thing like that even for a minute.

Heinrich went on speaking all the time. It was quite obvious that he wanted to stupefy himself. He continued to annihilate philosophers. He had just degraded them from poets to jugglers. Every system, yes, every philosophic system and every moral system was nothing but a juggle of words, a flight from the animated fulness of phenomena into the marionette fixity of categories. But that was the very thing which mankind desired. Hence all the philosophies, all the religions, all the moral laws. They were all taking part in that identical flight.

A few, a very few, were given the awful inner faculty of being ready to feel every experience as new and individual--were given the strength to endure standing in a new world as it were, every single minute. And the truth was this: only the man who conquered the cowardly impulse of imprisoning all experiences in words was shown life--that manifold unity, that wondrous thing, in its own true shape.

George had the feeling that Heinrich, with all his talk, was simply trying to succeed in shaking off any sense of responsibility towards a higher law by refusing to recognise any. And with a kind of growing antagonism to Heinrich's silly and extraordinary behaviour he felt that the scheme of the world that had threatened some hours ago to fall to pieces was gradually beginning to put itself together again within his own soul. He had only recently rebelled against the senselessness of the fate which had struck him, and yet he already began to feel vaguely that even what had appeared to him as a grievous misfortune had not been precipitated upon his head out of the void, but that it had come to him along a way which, though darker, was quite as preordained as that which approached him along a far more visible road and which he was accustomed to call necessity.

They were in front of the house in which Heinrich lived. The concierge stood at the door and informed them that he had put a telegram in Heinrich's room a short time ago.

"Oh," said Heinrich indifferently, and slowly went up the stairs. George followed. Heinrich lit a candle in the hall. The telegram lay on the little table. Heinrich opened it, held it near to the flickering light, read it himself and then turned to George. "She's expected for the rehearsal to-morrow, and has not yet turned up." He took the light in his hand and followed by George went into the next room, put the light on the secretary, and walked up and down. George heard through the open window the strumming of a piano resounding over the dark courtyard.

"Is there nothing else in the telegram?" he asked.

"No. But it's obvious that not only has she been absent from the rehearsal, but that she wasn't to be found in her lodgings either. Otherwise, they would certainly have telegraphed that she was ill, or given some explanation or other. Yes, my dear George," he breathed deeply, "it has happened this time."

"Why? There is no proof of it. Scarcely anything to go on."

Heinrich cut short the other's remarks with a curt gesture. He then looked at his watch and said: "There are no more trains to-day.... Yes.... What should one do first?" He stopped, remained standing, and suddenly said: "I'll go to her mother's. Yes. That's the best.... Perhaps--perhaps...."

They left the apartment. They took a conveyance at the next corner.

"Did the mother know anything?" asked George.

"Damn it all," said Heinrich, "about as much as mothers usually know. It is incredible the small amount of thought people give to what is taking place under their very noses, if they are not compelled to do so by some actual occasion. And most people have no idea how much they really know at the bottom of their hearts without owning up to it. The good woman is bound of course to be somewhat surprised at my springing up so suddenly.... I haven't seen her for a long time."

"What will you say to her?"

"Yes, what will I say to her?" repeated Heinrich, and bit at his cigar. "I say, I've got a splendid idea. You'll come with me, George. I'll introduce you as a manager, eh? You are travelling through, have got to catch a special train for St. Petersburg at eleven o'clock this very day. You've heard somewhere or other that the young lady is staying in Vienna, and I as an old friend of the family have been kind enough to introduce you."

"Do you feel in the mood for comedies like that?" asked George.

"Please forgive me, George, it's really not at all necessary. I'll just ask the old woman if she has any news.... What do you say?... How sultry it is to-night!"

They drove over the Ring, through the echoing Burghof, through the streets of the town. George felt in a strange state of tension. Supposing the actress were now really sitting quietly at home with her mother? He felt that it would mean a kind of disillusionment for him. And then he felt ashamed of that emotion. Do I look upon the whole thing as simply a distraction? he thought. What happens to other people ... is rarely more than that, Nürnberger would say.... A strange way of distracting oneself in order to forget the death of one's child.... But what is one to do?... I can't alter things. I shall be going away in a few days, thank heaven.

The vehicle stopped in front of a house in the neighbourhood of the Praterstern. A train was growling over the viaduct opposite; underneath the avenues of the Prater ran into the darkness. Heinrich dismissed the conveyance. "Thank you very much," he said to George. "Good-bye."

"I'll wait for you here."

"Will you really? Well, I should be awfully grateful if you would."

He disappeared through the door. George walked up and down.

In spite of the lateness of the hour it was still fairly lively in the street. The strains of a military band in the Prater carried to the place where he was. A man and a woman went past him; the man carried in his arms a sleeping child, which had slung its hands round its father's neck. George thought of the garden in Grinzinger, of the unwashed little thing which had stretched out its tiny hands to him from its mother's arms. Had he been really touched then, as Nürnberger had asserted? No, it was certainly not emotion. Something else perhaps. The vague consciousness of standing with both hands linked in that riveted chain which stretches from ancestors to descendants, of participating in the universal human destiny. Now, he stood suddenly released again, alone ... as though spurned by a miracle whose call he had heard without sufficient veneration. It struck ten o'clock from a neighbouring church tower. Only five hours, thought George, and how far away it all seemed! Now he was at liberty to knock about the world as he had done before.... Was he really at liberty?

Heinrich came out of the doorway. The door closed behind him. "Nothing," he said. "The mother has no idea. I asked her for the address, as though I had something important to communicate to her. I had just come from the Prater, and it had occurred to me ... and so on. A nice old woman. The brother sits at a table and copies on a drawing-board out of an illustrated paper a mediæval castle with innumerable turrets."

"Be candid, for once in a way," said George. "If you could save her by doing so, wouldn't you forgive her now?"

"My dear George, don't you see yet that it is not a question of whether I want to forgive her or not? Just remember this, I could just have stopped loving her, which can frequently happen without one's being deceived at all. Imagine this--a woman who loves you pursuing you, a woman whose contact for some reason or other makes you shudder swearing to you that she'll kill herself if you reject her. Would it be your duty to give in? Could you reproach yourself the slightest bit if she really went to her death, through the so-called pangs of despised love? Would you regard yourself as her murderer? It is sheer nonsense, isn't it? But if you think that it's what other people call conscience which is now torturing me, you are making a mistake. It is simply anxiety about what has happened to a person who was once very dear to me, and is I suppose still very dear to me. The uncertainty...." He suddenly stared fixedly in one direction.

"What is the matter with you?" asked George.

"Don't you see? A telegraph messenger is coming towards the door of the house." Before the man had time to ring Heinrich was at his side, and said a few words which George could not understand.

The messenger seemed to be making objections. Heinrich was answering and George, who had come nearer, could hear him.

"I have been waiting for you here in front of the door because the doctor gave me stringent orders to do so. This telegram contains ... perhaps ... bad news ... and it might be the death of my mother. If you don't believe me, you just ring and I'll go into the house with you." But he already had the telegram in his hands, opened it hurriedly and started to read it by the light of the street lamp. His face remained absolutely immobile. Then he folded the telegram together again, handed it to the messenger, pressed a few silver coins into his hand. "You must now take it in yourself."

The messenger was surprised, but the tip put him in a better temper.

Heinrich rang and turned away. "Come!" he said to George. They went silently down the street. After a few minutes Heinrich said: "It has happened."

George felt more violently shocked than he had anticipated. "Is it possible...?" he exclaimed.

"Yes," said Heinrich. "She drowned herself in the lake--where you spent a few days this summer," he added in a tone which seemed to imply that George too was somehow partly responsible for what had happened.

"What's in the telegram?" inquired George.

"It's from the manager. It contains the news that she has had a fatal accident while out boating. Requests her mother to give further directions."

He spoke in a cool hard voice, as though he were reading an announcement out of a paper.

"That poor woman! I say, Heinrich, oughtn't you to...."

"What!... Go to her? What should I be doing there?"

"Who is there, except you, who can at a time like this stand by her ... ought to, in fact?"

"Who except me?" He remained standing. "You think that because it happened more or less on my account? I tell you positively that I feel absolutely innocent. The boat out of which she let herself drop, and the waves which received her could not feel more innocent than I do. I just want to settle that point.... But that I should go in and see the mother.... Yes, you are quite right about it." And he turned again in the direction of the house.

"I will remain with you if you like," said George.

"What an idea, George! Just go quietly home. What more am I to ask you to do? And remember me to Anna, and tell her how sorry I am.... Well, you know that.... Ah, here we are. You don't mind my keeping you a few seconds more before I...." He stood silently there. He then began again, and his features became distorted. "I'll tell you something, George. It's like this. It's a great happiness that at certain times one doesn't know what has really happened to one. If one immediately realised the awfulness of moments like this, you know, to the extent one realises them afterwards in one's memory, or realises them before in anticipation--one would go mad. Even you, George--yes, even you. And many do really go mad. Those are probably the people who are granted the gift of realising straight away.... My mistress has drowned herself, do you see? That's all one can say. Has the same kind of thing really happened to any one else before? Oh no. Of course you think that you have read or heard of something similar. It is not true. To-day is the first time--the first time since the world's been in existence--that anything like this has ever happened."

The door opened and closed again. George was alone in the street. His head was dazed, his heart oppressed. He went a few steps, then took a fly and drove home. He saw the dead woman in front of him, just as she had stood in front of the stage door on that bright summer day in her red blouse and short white skirt, with the roving eyes beneath the reddish hair. He would have sworn at the time that she had a _liaison_ with the comedy actor who looked like Guido. Perhaps that really was the case. That might be _one_ kind of love and what she felt for Heinrich another. Really there were far too few words. You go to your death for one man, you go to bed with another--perhaps the very night before you drown yourself for the first. And what, after all, does a suicide really mean? Only perhaps that at some moment or other one has failed to appreciate death. How many tried again if they had failed once? The conversation with Grace came into his mind, that hot-and-cold conversation by Labinski's grave on the sunny February day in the thawing snow.

She had confessed to him then that she had not felt any fear or horror when she had found Labinski shot in front of the door of her flat. And when her little sister had died many years ago she had watched the whole night by the death-bed without feeling even a trace of what other people called horror. But, so she told George, she had learned to feel in men's embraces something that might be rather like that feeling. At first the thing had puzzled her acutely, subsequently she thought she could understand it, but according to what the doctors said she was doomed to barrenness, and that must be the reason why it came about that the moment of supreme delight, which was rendered as it were pointless by this fate, plunged her in terror and apprehension. This had struck George at the time as a piece of affectation. To-day he felt a breath of truth in it for the first time. She had been a strange creature. Would he ever meet again a person of a similar type? Why not? Quite soon, as a matter of fact. A new epoch in his life was now beginning and the next adventure was perhaps waiting for him somewhere or other. Adventure...? Had he a right still to think about such things?... Were not, from to-day onwards, his responsibilities more serious than they had ever been? Did he not love Anna more than he had ever done before? The child was dead, but the next one would live.... Heinrich had spoken the truth: Anna was simply cut out to be a mother. A mother.... But he thought with a shiver: Was she cut out at the same time to be the mother of _my_ children? The fly stopped. George got out and went up the two storeys to his apartment. Felician was not yet home. Who knows when he will come? thought George. I can't wait for him, I'm too tired. He undressed quickly, sank into bed, and a deep sleep enveloped him.

When he woke up his eyes tried to find through the window a white line between field and forest, the Sommerhaidenweg which he had been accustomed to look at for some days. But he only saw the bluish empty sky which a tower was piercing, and suddenly realised that he was at home, and all that he had lived through yesterday came into his mind. Yet he felt fresh and alert in mind and body, and it seemed to him as though apart from the calamity which had befallen him there was a piece of good fortune which he had to remember. Oh yes, the Detmold telegram.... Was it really so lucky? He had not thought so yesterday evening.

There was a knock at his door. Felician came into the room with his hat and stick in his hand. "I didn't know that you slept at home last night," he said. "Glad to see you. Well, what's the news out there?"

George rested his arm on the pillow and looked up towards his brother. "It's over," he said; "a boy, but dead," and he looked straight in front of him.

"Not really," said Felician with emotion, came up to him and instinctively put his hand upon his brother's head. He then put hat and stick on one side and sat down on the bed by him, and George could not help thinking of the morning hours of the years of his childhood, when he had often seen his father sitting like that on the edge of the bed when he woke up. He explained to Felician how it had all happened, laying especial stress on Anna's patience and gentleness; but he felt with a certain sense of misgiving that he had to force himself a bit to keep the tone of seriousness and depression which was appropriate to his news. Felician listened sympathetically, then got up and walked up and down the room. Then George got up, began to dress and told his brother of the remarkable developments of the rest of the evening. He spoke about his walks and drives with Heinrich Bermann and of the strange way in which they had learned at last of the actress's suicide.

"Oh, that's the one," said Felician. "It's already in the papers, you know."

"Well, what happened?" asked George curiously.

"She rowed out into the lake and slipped into the water out of the boat.... Well, you can read it.... I suppose you're now going straight out into the country again?" he added.

"Of course," replied George, "but I have still got something to tell you, Felician, something which may interest you." And he told his brother about the Detmold telegram.

Felician seemed surprised. "This is getting serious," he exclaimed.

"Yes, it's getting serious," replied George.

"You have not yet answered?"

"No, how could I?"

"And what do you mean to do?"

"Frankly, I don't know. You understand I can't go straight away, particularly under circumstances like this."

Felician looked reflective. "A little delay probably wouldn't hurt," he said then.

"I agree. I must first find out how they're getting on out there. Of course I should also like to talk it over with Anna."

"Where have you put the telegram? Can I read it?"

"It's lying on the secretary," said George, who was at the moment engaged in tying up his shoes.

Felician went into the next room, took the telegram in his hand and read it. "It is much more urgent," he observed, "than I thought."

"It seems to me, Felician, that it still strikes you as strange that I am shortly going to have a real profession."

Felician stood at his brother's side again and stroked his hair. "It is perhaps rather providential that the telegram should have come yesterday."

"Providential! How so?"

"I mean that after such a sad business the prospect of practical occupation ought to do you twice as much good.... But I am afraid I must leave you now. I've still got quite a lot to do. Farewell visits among other things."

"When are you going then, Felician?"

"A week to-day. I say, George, I suppose you are probably coming back from the country to-day?"

"Certainly, if everything is all right out there."

"Perhaps we might see each other again in the evening."

"I should like to very much, Felician."

"Well then, if it suits you I'll be at home at seven. We might go and have supper together--but alone, not at the club."

"Yes, with pleasure."

"And you might do me a favour," began Felician again after a short silence. "Remember me out there very very kindly ... tell her that I sympathise most sincerely."

"Thank you, Felician. I will tell her."

"Really, George, I can't tell you how much it touched me," continued Felician with warmth. "I only hope that she'll soon get over it.... And you, too."

George nodded. "Do you know," he said gently, "what it was going to be called?"

Felician looked at his brother's eyes very seriously, then he pressed his hand. "Next time," he said with a kindly smile. He shook hands with his brother again and went.

George looked after him, torn by varying emotions. Yet he's not altogether sorry, he thought, that it should have turned out like that.

He got ready quickly and decided to cycle into the country again to-day. It was only when he had got past most of the traffic that he really became conscious of himself. The sky had grown a little dull and a cool wind blew from the hills towards George, like an autumn greeting. He did not want to meet any one in the little village where yesterday's events were bound to be already known, and took the upper road between the meadows and the garden to the approach from the back. The nearer the moment came when he was to see Anna again, the heavier his heart grew. At the railing he dismounted from his cycle and hesitated a little. The garden was empty. At the bottom lay the house sunk in silence. George breathed deeply and painfully. How different it might have been! he thought, walked down and heard the gravel crunch beneath his feet. He went on to the verandah, leaned his cycle against the railing and looked into the room through the open window. Anna lay there with open eyes. "Good morning," he cried, as cheerfully as he could.

Frau Golowski, who was sitting by Anna's bed, got up and said at once: "We've had a good sleep, a good sound sleep."

"That's right," said George, and vaulted over the railing into the room.

"You're very enterprising to-day," said Anna with her arch smile, which reminded George of long-past times. Frau Golowski informed him that the Professor had been early in the morning, had expressed himself completely satisfied and taken Frau Rosner with him in his carriage into the town. She then went away with a kindly glance.

George bent down over Anna, kissed her with real feeling on the eyes and mouth, pushed the chair nearer, sat down and said: "My brother--sends you his sincere wishes."

Her lips quivered imperceptibly. "Thank you," she replied gently, and then remarked: "So you came out on your cycle?"

"Yes," he replied. "One has to keep a look-out you know on the way, and there are times when it's rather a sound thing one has to do so." He then told her how last evening had finished up. He related the whole thing as an exciting story, and it was only in the orthodox way at the end that Anna was allowed to find out how Heinrich's mistress had ended her life. He expected to see her moved, but she kept a strangely hard expression about her mouth. "It's really dreadful," said George. "Don't you think so?"

"Yes," replied Anna shortly, and George felt that her kindness completely failed her here. He saw the loathing flowing out of her soul, not tepidly, as though from one person to another, but strong and deep like a stream of hate from world to world.

He dropped the subject and began again. "Now for something important, my child." He was smiling but his heart beat a little.

"Well?" she asked tensely.

He took the Detmold telegram out of his breast pocket and read it to her. "What do you think of that?" he asked with affected pride.

"And what did you answer?"

"Nothing so far," he replied casually, as though he had never thought of taking the matter seriously. "Of course I wanted first to talk it over with you."

"Well, what do you think?" she asked imperturbably.

"I ... shall refuse of course. I'll wire that I ... at any rate, can't come yet awhile." And he seriously explained to her that nothing would be lost by a postponement, that he would at any rate be welcomed as a special visitor, and that this pressing request was only due to an accident that one had no right to expect.

She let him go on speaking for a while, then she said: "There you go being casual again. I think you should have made a special point of answering at once and...."

"Well, and...."

"Perhaps have even taken the train there straight away this morning."

"Instead of coming out to see you--eh?" he jested.

She remained serious. "Why not?" she said, and noticing him jerk his head up in surprise, "I'm getting on very well, thank heaven, George. And even if I were a bit worse you couldn't do any good, so...."

"Yes, my child," he interrupted, "it seems to me you don't appreciate what it really means! Going there, of course, is a fairly simple matter--but--staying there! Staying there at least till Easter! The season lasts till then."

"Well, George, I think it quite right that you haven't gone away without first saying goodbye to me. But look here, you've got to go anyway, haven't you? Even though we didn't actually speak about it during the last weeks we were both quite well aware of it. For whether you go away in a month's time or the day after to-morrow--or to-day...."

George now began to argue seriously. It was not at all the same thing whether he went away in a month's time or to-day. One could manage to get used to certain thoughts in the course of a month, and besides, talk over everything properly--with regard to the future.

"What is there so much to talk over?" she replied in a tired voice. "Why, in a month's time you'll be.... You'll have as little chance of taking me with you as you have to-day. I even think that there won't be any point in our talking seriously about anything until after your return. A great deal will be bound to be cleared up by then.... At any rate, with regard to your prospects...." She looked out of the window into the garden.

George showed mild indignation at her matter-of-fact coolness, which never deserted her, even at a moment like that. "Yes, indeed," he said, "when one considers--what it means for you to stay here, and me...."

She looked at him. "I know what it means," she said.

Instinctively he avoided her look, took her hands and kissed them. He felt inwardly harrowed. When he looked up again he saw her eyes resting on him quite maternally, and she spoke to him like a mother. She explained to him that it was _just_ because of the future--and there swept around that word a gentle suggestion of actual hope--that he should not miss an opportunity like that. In two or three weeks he could come back from Detmold to Vienna for a few days, for the people there would certainly appreciate that he must put his affairs over here in order. But above all it was necessary to give them a proof of his seriousness. And if he set any store by her advice there was only one thing to do: take the train that very evening. He need have no anxiety about her. She felt that she was quite out of danger. She felt that quite unmistakably. Of course he would hear from her every day, twice a day if he liked, morning and evening.

He did not yield at once, coming back again to the point that the unexpectedness of this separation would occasion a relapse. She answered that she would much prefer a quick separation like this to the prospect of another four weeks spent in anxiety, emotion and the fear of losing him. And the essential point remained that it was not a question of more than half the year, so they had half the year for themselves, and if everything went all right there would not be many periods of separation for the--the future.

He now began again: "And what will you do in this half-year, while I'm away? It is really...."

She interrupted him. "For the time being it will go on just as it has been going on for years; but I have been thinking this morning about a lot of things."

"The school for singing?"

"That, too. Although of course that is neither so easy nor so simple. And besides," she added, with her arch expression, "it would be a pity if one had to shut it up again too soon. But we'll talk about all that later on. You go now and telegraph."

"Yes, but what!" he exclaimed in such desperation that she could not help laughing.

Then she said: "Quite simple, 'Shall have the honour to present myself at your office to-morrow noon. Yours very obediently or faithfully ... or very proudly....'"

He looked at her. Then he kissed her hand and said: "You're certainly the cleverer of us two."

His tone seemed to hint "the cooler too." But a gentle, tender and somewhat mocking look from her turned away the _innuendo_.

"Well, I'll be back again in ten minutes." He left her with a cheerful face, went into the next room and shut the door. Opposite, in that other room, it now occurred to him again forcibly--his dead child lay in its coffin.... For the necessary steps, to use Doctor Stauber's expression of yesterday, were bound to have been already taken. He felt a paroxysm of grievous yearning.

Frau Golowski came out of the hall. She came up to him and spoke with admiration of Anna's resignation and calmness.

George listened somewhat absent-mindedly. His looks kept always glancing through the doorway and at last he said gently: "I should like to see it once more."

She looked at him, at first slightly shocked and then sympathetically.

"Nailed down already?" he asked anxiously.

"Sent away already," replied Frau Golowski slowly.

"Sent away!" His face became convulsed with such agony that the old woman laid her hands on his arm as though to calm him.

"I went to notify it quite early," she said, "and then the other matter took place very quickly. They took it away an hour ago to the mortuary."

"To the mortuary ..." George shuddered. He was silent for a long time as though unnerved from having just learned a terrible and completely unexpected piece of news. When he recovered himself again he still felt Frau Golowski's friendly hand upon his arm and saw her kind eyes with their tired lines resting on his face. "So it's all finished," he said, with an indignant look upwards, as though his last hope had been maliciously stolen from him. He then shook hands with Frau Golowski. "And you've undertaken all this, dear lady.... I really don't know ... how I can ever...."

A gesture from the old woman deprecated any further thanks.

George left the house, threw a contemptuous glance at the little blue angel, which seemed to look anxiously down at the faded flower-beds, and went into the street. On his way to the post-office he worried over the wording of the telegram that was to announce his arrival at the place of his new profession and his new prospects.