The Road to the Open

by Arthur Schnitzler

V

George gently opened the door of Anna's room. She still lay asleep in bed and breathed deeply and peacefully. He went out of the slightly darkened room, back again into his own and shut the door. Then he went to the open window and looked out. Clouds bathed in sunshine were sweeping over the water. The mountains opposite with their clearly-defined lines were floating in the brilliancy of the heavens, while the brightest blue was glittering over the gardens and houses of Lugano.

George was quite delighted to breathe in once more the air of this June morning, which brought to him the moist freshness of the lake and the perfume of the plane-trees, magnolias and roses in the hotel park; to look out upon this view, whose spring-like peace had welcomed him like a fresh happiness every morning for the last three weeks.

He drank his tea quickly, ran down the stairs as quickly and expectantly as he had once, when a boy, hurried off to his play, and took his accustomed way along the bank in the grey fragrance of the early shade. Here he would think of his own lonely morning walks at Palermo and Taormina in the previous spring, walks which he had frequently continued for hours on end, since Grace was very fond of lying in bed with open eyes until noon.

That period of his life, over which a recent though no doubt much-desired farewell seemed to squat like a sinister cloud, usually struck him as more or less bathed in melancholy. But this time all painful things seemed to lie in the far distance, and at any rate he had it in his power to put off the end as long as he wanted, if it did not come from fate itself.

He had left Vienna with Anna at the beginning of March, as it was no longer possible to conceal her condition. In January, in fact, George had decided to speak to her mother. He had more or less prepared himself for it, and was consequently able to make his communication quietly and in well-turned phraseology. The mother listened in silence and her eyes grew large and moist. Anna sat on the sofa with an embarrassed smile and looked at George as he spoke, with a kind of curiosity. They sketched out the plan for the ensuing months. George wanted to stay abroad with Anna until the early summer. Then a house was to be taken in the country in the neighbourhood of Vienna, so that her mother should not be far away in the time of greatest need, and the child could without difficulty be given out to nurse in the neighbourhood of the town. They also thought out an excuse for officious inquisitive people for Anna's departure and absence.

As her voice had made substantial progress of late—which was perfectly true—she had gone off to a celebrated singing mistress in Dresden, to complete her training.

Frau Rosner nodded several times, as though she agreed with everything, but the features of her face became sadder and sadder. It was not so much that she was oppressed by what she had just learnt, as she was by the realisation that she was bound to be so absolutely defenceless, poor middle-class mother that she was, sitting opposite the aristocratic seducer.

George, who noticed this with regret, endeavoured to assume a lighter and more sympathetic tone. He came closer to the good woman, he took her hand and held it for some seconds in his own. Anna had scarcely contributed a word to the whole discussion, but when George got ready to go she got up, and for the first time in front of her mother she offered him her lips to kiss, as though she were now celebrating her betrothal to him.

George went downstairs in better spirits, as though the worst were now really over. Henceforth he spent whole hours at the Rosners' more frequently than before, practising music with Anna, whose voice had now grown noticeably in power and volume. The mother's demeanour to George became more friendly. Why, it often seemed to him as though she had to be on her guard against a growing sympathy for him, and there was one evening in the family circle when George stayed for supper, improvised afterwards to the company from the Meistersingers and Lohengrin with his cigar in his mouth, could not help enjoying the lively applause, particularly from Josef, and was almost shocked to notice as he went home that he had felt quite as comfortable, as though it had been a home he had recently won for himself.

When he was sitting over his black coffee with Felician a few days later the servant brought in a card, the receipt of which made a slight blush mount to his cheek. Felician pretended not to notice his brother's embarrassment, said good-bye and left the room. He met old Rosner in the doorway, inclined his head slightly in answer to his greeting and took no further notice.

George invited Herr Rosner, who came in in his winter coat with his hat and umbrella, to sit down, and offered him a cigar. Old Rosner said: "I have just been smoking," a remark which somehow or other reassured George, and sat down, while George remained leaning on the table.

Then the old man began with his accustomed slowness: "You will probably be able to imagine, Herr Baron, why I have taken the liberty of troubling you. I really wanted to speak to you in the earlier part of the day, but unfortunately I could not get away from the office."

"You would not have found me at home in the morning, Herr Rosner," answered George courteously.

"All the better then that I didn't have my journey for nothing. My wife has told me this morning ... what has happened...." He looked at the floor.

"Yes," said George, and gnawed at his upper lip. "I myself intended.... But won't you take off your overcoat? It is very warm in the room."

"No thank you, thank you, it is not at all too warm for me. Well, I was horrified when my wife gave me this information. Indeed I was, Herr Baron.... I never would have thought it of Anna ... never thought it possible ... it is ... really dreadful...." He spoke all the time in his usual monotonous voice, though he shook his head more often than usual.

George could not help looking all the time at his head with its thin yellow-grey hair, and felt nothing but a desolate boredom. "Really, Herr Rosner, the thing is not dreadful," he said at last. "If you knew how much I ... and how sincere my affection for Anna is, you would certainly be very far from thinking the thing dreadful. At any rate, I suppose your wife has told you about our plans for the immediate future ... or am I making a mistake...?"

"Not at all, Herr Baron, I have been informed of everything this morning. But I must say that I have noticed for some weeks that something was wrong in the house. It often struck me that my wife was very nervous and was often on the point of crying."

"On the point of crying! There is really no occasion for that, Herr Rosner. Anna herself, who is more concerned than any one else, is very well and is in her usual good spirits...."

"Yes, Anna at any rate takes it very well, and that, to speak frankly, is more or less my consolation. But I cannot describe to you, Baron, how hard hit ... how, I could almost say ... like a bolt from the blue ... I could never, no, never have ... have believed it...." He could not say any more. His voice trembled.

"I am really very concerned," said George, "that you should take the matter like this, in spite of the fact that your wife is bound to have explained everything to you, and that the measures we have taken for the near future presumably meet with your approval. I would prefer not to talk about a time which is further, though I hope not too far off, because phrases of all kinds are more or less distasteful to me, but you may be sure, Herr Rosner, that I certainly shall not forget what I owe to a person like Anna.... Yes, what I owe to myself." He gulped.

In all his memory there was no moment in his life in which he had felt less sympathy for himself. And now, as is necessarily the case in all pointless conversations, they repeated themselves several times, until Herr Rosner finally apologised for having troubled him, and took his leave of George, who accompanied him to the stairs.

George felt an unpleasant aftermath in his soul for some days after this visit. The brother would be the finishing touch, he thought irritably, and he could not help imagining a scene of explanation in the course of which the young man would endeavour to play the avenger of the family honour, while George put him in his place with extraordinarily trenchant expressions.

George nevertheless felt a sense of relief after the conversation with Anna's parents had taken place, and the hours which he spent with his beloved alone in the peaceful room opposite the church were full of a peculiar feeling of comfort and safety. It sometimes seemed to them both as though time stood still.

It was all very well for George to bring guide-books, Burckhardt's Cicerone, and even maps to their meetings, and to plan out with Anna all kinds of routes; he did not as a matter of fact seriously think that all this would ever be realised.

So far, however, as the house in which the child was to be born was concerned, they were both impressed with the necessity of its being found and taken before they left Vienna. Anna once saw an advertisement in the paper which she was accustomed to read carefully for that very object, of a lodge near the forest, and not far from a railway station, which could be reached in one and a half hours from Vienna. One morning they both took the train to the place in question and they had a memory of a snow-covered lonely wooden building with antlers over the door, an old drunken keeper, a young blonde girl, a swift sleigh-ride over a snowy winter street, an extraordinarily jolly dinner in an enormous room in the inn, and then home in a badly-lighted over-heated compartment. This was the only time that George tried to find with Anna the house that must be standing somewhere in the world and waiting to be decided upon. Otherwise he usually went alone by train or tramway to look round the summer resorts which were near Vienna. Once, on a spring day that had come straight into the middle of the winter, George was walking through one of the small places situated quite near town, which he was particularly fond of, where village buildings, unassuming villas and elegant country houses lay close upon each other. He had completely forgotten, as often happened, why he had taken the journey, and was thinking with emotion of the fact that Beethoven and Schubert had taken the same walk as he, many years ago, when he unexpectedly ran up against Nürnberger. They greeted each other, praised the fine day, which had enticed them so far out into the open, and expressed regret that they so rarely saw each other since Bermann had left Vienna.

"Is it long since you heard anything of him?" asked George.

"I have only had a card from him," replied Nürnberger, "since he left. It is much more likely he would correspond regularly with you than with me."

"Why is it more likely?" inquired George, somewhat irritated by Nürnberger's tone, as indeed be frequently was.

"Well, at any rate you have the advantage over me of being a new acquaintance, and consequently offering more exciting subject-matter for his psychological interest than I can."

George detected in the accustomed flippancy of these words a certain sense of grievance which he more or less understood, for, as a matter of fact, Heinrich had bothered very little about Nürnberger of late, though he had previously seen a great deal of him, it being always his way to draw men to him and then drop them with the greatest lack of consideration, according as their character did or did not fit in with his own mood.

"In spite of that I am not much better off than you," said George. "I haven't had any news of him for some weeks either. His father, too, appears to be in a bad way according to the last letter."

"So I suppose it will soon be all up with the poor old man now."

"Who knows? According to what Bermann writes me, he can still last for months."

Nürnberger shook his head seriously.

"Yes," said George lightly. "The doctors ought to be allowed in cases like that ... to shorten the matter."

"You are perhaps right," answered Nürnberger, "but who knows whether our friend Heinrich, however much the sight of his father's incurable malady may put him off his work and perhaps many other things as well—who knows whether he might not all the same refuse the suggestion of finishing off this hopeless matter by a morphia injection?"

George felt again repulsed by Nürnberger's bitter, ironic tone, and yet when he remembered the hour when he had seen Heinrich more violently upset by a few obscure words in the letter of a mistress than by his father's madness, he could not drive out the impression that Nürnberger's opinion of their friend was correct. "Did you know old Bermann?" he asked.

"Not personally, but I still remember the time when his name was known in the papers, and I remember, too, many extremely sound and excellent speeches which he made in Parliament. But I am keeping you, my dear Baron. Goodbye. We will see each other no doubt one of these days in the café, or at Ehrenbergs'."

"You are not keeping me at all," replied George with deliberate courtesy. "I am quite at large, and I am availing myself of the opportunity of looking at houses for the summer."

"So you are going in the country, near Vienna this year?"

"Yes, for a time probably, and apart from that a family I know has asked me if I should chance to run across...." He grew a little red, as he always did when he was not adhering strictly to the truth. Nürnberger noticed it and said innocently: "I have just passed by some villas which are to let. Do you see, for instance, that white one with the white terrace?"

"It looks very nice. We might have a look at it, if you won't find it too dull coming with me. Then we can go back together to town."

The garden which they entered sloped upwards and was very long and narrow. It reminded Nürnberger of one in which he had played as a child. "Perhaps it is the same," he said. "We lived for years and years you know in the country in Grinzing or Heiligenstadt."

This "we" affected George in quite a strange way. He could scarcely realise Nürnberger's ever having been quite young, ever having lived as a son with his father and mother, as a brother with his sisters, and he felt all of a sudden that this man's whole life had something strange and hard about it.

At the top of the garden an open arbour gave a wonderfully fine view of the town, which they enjoyed for some time. They slowly went down, accompanied by the caretaker's wife, who carried a small child wrapped in a grey shawl in her arms. They then looked at the house—low musty rooms with cheap battered carpets on the floor, narrow wooden beds, dull or broken mirrors.

"Everything will be done up again in the spring," explained the caretaker, "then it will look very cheerful." The little child suddenly held out its tiny hand towards George, as if it wanted him to take it up in his arms. George was somewhat moved and smiled awkwardly.

As he rode with Nürnberger into the town on the platform of the tramway and chatted to him he felt that he had never got so close to him on all the many previous occasions when they had been together, as during this hour of clear winter sunshine in the country. When they said goodbye it was quite a matter of course that they should arrange a new excursion on a day in the immediate future. And so it came about that George was several times accompanied by Nürnberger, when he continued his househunting in the neighbourhood of Vienna. On these occasions the fiction was still kept up that George was looking for a house for a family whom he knew, that Nürnberger believed it and that George believed that Nürnberger believed it.

On these excursions Nürnberger frequently came to speak of his youth, to speak about the parents whom he had lost very early, of a sister who had died young and of his elder brother, the only one of his relatives who was still alive. But he, an ageing bachelor like Edmund himself, did not live in Vienna, but in a small town in Lower Austria, where he was a teacher in a public school, where he had been transferred fifteen years ago as an assistant. He could easily have managed afterwards to have got an appointment again in the metropolis, but after a few years of bitterness, and even defiance, he had become so completely acclimatised to the quiet petty life of the place where he was staying that he came to regard a return to Vienna as more a sacrifice than anything else, and he now lived on, passionately devoted to his profession and particularly to his studies in philology, far from the world, lonely, contented, a kind of philosopher in the little town. When Nürnberger spoke of this distant brother George often felt as though he were hearing him speak about some one who had died, so absolutely out of the question seemed every possibility of a permanent reunion in the future. It was in quite a different tone, almost as though he were speaking of a being who could return once again, that he would talk with a perpetual wistfulness of the sister who had been dead several years. It was on a misty February day, while they were at the railway station waiting for the train to Vienna, and walking up and down with each other on the platform, that Nürnberger told George the story of this sister, who when a child of sixteen had become possessed as it were by a tremendous passion for the theatre, and had run away from home without saying goodbye in a fit of childish romanticism. She had wandered from town to town, from stage to stage, for ten years, playing smaller and smaller parts, since neither her talent nor her beauty appeared to be sufficient for the career which she had chosen, but always with the same enthusiasm, always with the same confidence in her future, in spite of the disillusions which she experienced and the sorrow which she saw. In the holidays she would come to the brothers, who were still living together, sometimes for weeks, sometimes only for days, and tell them about the provincial halls in which she had acted as though they were great theatres; about her few successes as though they were triumphs which she had won, about the wretched comedians at whose side she worked as though they were great artists, tell them about the petty intrigues that took place around her as though they were powerful tragedies of passion. And instead of gradually realising the miserable world in which she was living a life which was as much to be pitied as that of any one else, she spun every year the essence of her soul into more and more golden dreams. This went on for a long time, until at last she came home, feverish and ill. She lay in bed for months on end with flushed cheeks, raving in her delirium of a fame and happiness which she had never experienced, got up once again in apparent health, and went away once more, only to come back home, this time after a few weeks, in complete collapse with death written on her forehead. Her brother now travelled with her to the South; to Arco, Meran, to the Italian Lakes, and it was only as she lay stretched out in southern gardens beneath flowering trees, far away from the whirl that had dazed and intoxicated her throughout the years that she realised at last that her life had been simply a racketing about beneath a painted sky and between paper walls—that the whole essence of her existence had been an illusion. But even the little everyday incidents, the apartments and inns of the foreign town, seemed to her memory simply scenes which she had played in as an actress by the footlights, and not scenes which she had really lived, and as she approached nearer and nearer to the grave, there awoke within her an awful yearning for that real life which she had missed, and the more surely she knew that it was lost to her for ever, the clearer became the gaze with which she realised the fullness of the world. And the strangest touch of all was the way in which, in the last weeks of her life, that talent to which she had sacrificed her whole existence without ever really possessing it manifested itself with diabolic uncanniness.

"It seems to me, even to-day," said Nürnberger, "that I have never heard verses so declaimed, never seen whole scenes so acted, even by the greatest actress, as I did by my sister in the hotel room at Cadenabbia, looking out on to the Lake of Como, a few days before she died. Of course," he added, "it is possible, even probable, that my memory is deceiving me."

"But why?" asked George, who was so pleased with this finale that he did not want to have it spoiled. And he endeavoured to convince Nürnberger, who listened to him with a smile, that he could not have made a mistake, and that the world had lost a great actress in that strange girl who lay buried in Cadenabbia.

George did not find on his excursions with Nürnberger the house in the country for which he was looking. In fact it seemed to become more difficult to find every time he went out. Nürnberger made occasional jokes about George's exacting requirements. He seemed to be looking for a villa which was to be faced in front by a well-kept road, while it was to have at the back a garden door which led into the natural forest. Eventually George himself did not seriously believe that he would now succeed in finding the desired house, and relied on the pressure of necessity after his return from his travels.

It seemed more essential to get as soon as possible into touch with a doctor, but George put this off too from one day to another. But one evening Anna informed him that she had been suddenly panic-stricken by a new attack of faintness, had visited Doctor Stauber and explained her condition to him. He had been very nice, had not expressed any astonishment, had thoroughly reassured her and only expressed the wish to speak to George before they went away.

A few days afterwards George went to see the doctor in accordance with his invitation.

The consultation hours were over. Doctor Stauber received him with the friendliness which he had anticipated, seemed to treat the whole matter as being as regular and as much a matter of course as it could possibly be, and spoke of Anna just as though she had been a young wife, a method of procedure which affected George in a strange but not unpleasant way.

When the practical discussion was over the doctor inquired about the destination of their journey. George had not yet mapped out any programme, only this much was decided, that the spring was to be spent in the south, probably in Italy. Doctor Stauber took the opportunity to talk about his last stay in Rome, which was ten years back. He had been in personal touch on this occasion, as he had been once before, with the director of the excavations and spoke to George in almost ecstatic terms of the latest discoveries on the Palatine, about which he had written monographs as a young man, which he had published in the antiquarian journals. He then showed George, and not without pride, his library, which was divided into two sections, medicine and the history of art, and took out and offered to lend him a few rare books, one printed in the year 1834 on the Vatican collections and also a history of Sicily. George felt highly excited as he realised with such vividness the rich days that lay in front of him. He was overcome by a kind of homesickness for places which he knew well and had missed for a long time. Half-forgotten pictures floated up in his memory, the pyramids of Cestius stood on the horizon in sharp outlines, as they had appeared to him when he had ridden back as a boy into the town at evening with the prince of Macedon; the dim church, where he had seen his first mistress step up to the altar as a bride, opened its doors; a bark under a dark sky with strange sulphur yellow sails drew near to the coast.... He began to speak about the several towns and landscapes of the south which he had seen as a boy and as a youth, explained the longing for those places which often seized on him like a genuine homesickness, his joy at being able to take in with mature appreciation all the differing things which he had longed for, reserved for himself and then forgotten, and many new things besides, and this time too in the society of a being who was able to appreciate and enjoy everything with him, and whom he held dear.

Doctor Stauber, who was in the act of putting a book back on the shelf, turned round suddenly to George, looked gently at him and said: "I am very glad of that." As George answered his look with some surprise he added: "It was the first tender allusion to your relationship to Annerl that I have noticed in the course of the last hour. I know, I know that you are not the kind of man to take a comparative stranger into your confidence, but if only because I had no reason to expect it, it has really done me good. It came straight from your heart, one could see it; and I should have been really sorry for Annerl—excuse me, I always call her that—if I had been driven to think that you are not as fond of her as she deserves."

"I really don't know," replied George coolly, "what gave you cause to doubt it, doctor."

"Did I say anything about doubts?" replied Stauber good-humouredly. "But, after all, it has happened before that a young man who has had all kinds of experiences does not appreciate a sacrifice of this kind sufficiently, for it still is a sacrifice, my dear Baron. We can be as superior to all prejudices as much as we like—but it is not a trifle even to-day for a young girl of good family to make up her mind to do a thing like that, and I won't conceal it from you—of course I did not let Annerl notice anything—it gave even me a slight shock when she came to me the other day and told me all about it."

"Excuse me, Herr Doctor," replied George, irritated but yet polite, "if it gave you a shock that is surely some proof against your being superior to prejudices...."

"You are right," said Stauber with a smile, "but perhaps you will overlook this lapse when you consider that I am somewhat older than you and belong to another age. Even a more or less independent man ... which I flatter myself I am ... cannot quite escape from the influence of his age. It is a strange thing, but believe me, even among the young people, who have grown up on Nietzsche and Ibsen, there are quite as many Philistines as there were thirty years ago. They won't own up to it, but it does go against the grain with them, for instance, if some one goes and seduces their sister, or if one of their worthy wives suddenly takes it into her head that she wants to live her own life.... Many, of course, are consistent and carry their pose through ... but that is more a matter of self-control than of their real views, and in the old days, you know, the age to which I belong, when ideas were so immovably hide-bound, when every one for instance was quite sure of things like this: one has to honour one's parents or else one is a knave ... or ... one only loves really once in one's life ... or it's a pleasure to die for one's fatherland ... in that time, mind you, when every decent man held up some flag or other, or at any rate had something written on his banner ... believe me, the so-called modern ideas had more adherents than you suspect. The only thing was that those adherents did not quite know it themselves, they did not trust their own ideas, they thought themselves, as it were, debauchees or even criminals. Shall I tell you something, Herr Baron? There are really no new ideas at all. People feel with a new intensity—that's what it is. But do you seriously think that Nietzsche discovered the superman, Ibsen the fraud of life and Anzengruber the truth that the parents who desire love and honour from their children ought to 'come up to the scratch' themselves? Not a bit of it. All the ethical ideas have always been there, and one would really be surprised if one knew what absolute blockheads have thought of the so-called great new truths, and have even frequently given them expression long before the geniuses to whom we owe these truths, or rather the courage to regard these truths as true. If I have gone rather too far forgive me. I really only wanted to say ... and you will believe me, I am sure.... I know as well as you, Baron, that there is many a virgin girl who is a thousand times more corrupt than a so-called fallen woman; and that there is many a young man who passes for respectable who has worse things on his conscience than starting a liaison with an innocent girl. And yet ... it is just the curse of my period ..." he interpolated with a smile, "I could not help it, the first moment Annerl told me her story certain unpleasant words which in their day had their own fixed meaning began to echo through my old head in their old tones, silly out-of-date words like ... libertine ... seduction ... leaving in the lurch ... and so on, and that is why I must ask you once more to forgive me, now that I have got to know you somewhat more intimately ... that is why I felt that shock which a modern man would certainly not own that he experienced. But to talk seriously once again, just consider a minute how your poor father, who did not know Anna, would have taken the matter. He was certainly one of the shrewdest and most unprejudiced men whom one can imagine ... and all the same you have not the slightest doubt that the matter would not have passed off without his feeling something of a shock as well."

George could not help holding out his hand to the doctor. The unexpectedness of this sudden allusion caused so intense a longing to spring up within him that the only thing he could do to assuage it was to begin to talk of him who had passed away. The doctor was able to tell him of many meetings with the late baron, mostly chance casual encounters in the street, at the sessions of the scientific academy, at concerts. There came another of those moments in which George thought himself strangely guilty in his attitude towards the dead man and registered a mental vow to become worthy of his memory.

"Remember me kindly to Annerl," said the doctor as he said goodbye, "but I would rather you did not tell her anything about the shock. She is a very sensitive creature, that you know well enough, and now it is particularly important to save her any excitement. Remember, my dear Baron, there is only one question before us now—to see that a healthy child comes into the world, everything else.... Well, give her my best regards. I hope we shall all see each other again in the summer in the best of health."

George went away with a heightened consciousness of his responsibilities towards the being who had given herself to him and to that other who would wake up to existence in a few months. He thought first of making a will and leaving it behind with a lawyer. But on further consideration he thought it more proper to confide in his brother, who after all stood nearer to him in sentiment than any one else. But with that peculiar embarrassment which was characteristic of the really intimate relationship between the brothers he let day after day go by, until at last Felician's departure on the hunting expedition in Africa was quite imminent.

The night before, on the way home from the club, George informed his brother that he was thinking of taking a long journey in the near future.

"Really! For how long shall you be away?" asked Felician.

George caught the note of a certain anxiety in these words and felt that it was incumbent on him to add: "It will probably be the last long journey I shall take for some years. I hope to find myself in a permanent position in the autumn."

"So you have quite made up your mind?"

"Yes, of course."

"I am very glad, George, for different reasons, as you can imagine, that you want at last to do something serious. And besides, it's a very sound thing, that it is not a case of one of us going out into the world while the other remains at home alone. That would really have been rather sad."

George knew quite well that Felician would get a foreign diplomatic post in the following autumn, but he had never realised so clearly that in a few months that brotherly life which had lasted for so many years, that common life in the old house opposite the park, yes, his whole youth so to speak, would be irrevocably over and done with. He saw life lying in front of him, serious, almost menacing. "Have you any idea," he asked, "where they will send you?"

"There is some chance of Athens."

"Would you like that?"

"Why not? The society ought to be fairly interesting. Bernburg was there for three years and was sorry to leave. And they have transferred him to London, too, and that's certainly not to be sniffed at."

They walked in silence for a while and took their usual way through the park. An atmosphere suggesting the approaching spring was around them, although small white flakes of snow still gleamed on the lawns.

"So you are going to Italy?" asked Felician.

"Yes."

"As far down South as last spring?"

"I don't know yet."

Again a short silence. Suddenly Felician's voice came out of the darkness. "Have you heard anything of Grace since then?"

"Of Grace?" repeated George, somewhat surprised, for it had been a long time since Felician had mentioned that name. "I have heard nothing more of Grace. Besides, that is what we arranged. We took farewell of each other for ever at Genoa. That is already more than a year ago...."

A gentleman was sitting on a seat quite in the darkness in a fur coat with a top hat and white gloves. "Ah, Labinski," thought George for a whole minute; the next minute he of course remembered that he had shot himself. This was not the first time that he had thought he had seen him. A man had sat in broad daylight in the botanical garden at Palermo under a Japanese ash-tree whom George had taken for a whole second for Labinski; and recently George had thought he had recognised the face of his dead father behind the shut windows of a fiacre.

The houses gleamed behind the leafless branches. One of them was the house in which the brothers lived. The time has come, thought George, for me to mention the matter at last. And to bring matters to a head, he observed lightly: "Besides, I am not going to Italy alone this year."

"Hm! Hm!" said Felician, and looked in front of him.

George felt at the same moment that he had not taken the right tone. He was apprehensive of Felician's thinking something like this: "Oh yes, he has got an adventure again with some shady person or other." And he added seriously: "I say, Felician, I have something serious I should like to talk to you about."

"What! Serious!"

"Yes."

"Well, George," said Felician gently, and looked at him sideways, "what is up, then? You are not thinking of marrying by any chance?"

"Oh no," replied George, and then felt irritated that he had repudiated that possibility with such definiteness. "No, it is not a question of marriage, but of something much more vital."

Felician remained standing for a moment. "You have a child?" he asked seriously.

"No, not yet. That's just it, that is why we are leaving."

"Indeed," said Felician.

They had got out of the park. Involuntarily both looked up to the window of their house, from which only a year ago their father had so often nodded his welcome to them both. Both felt with sorrow that somehow since their father's death they had gradually slipped away from each other—and felt at the same time a slight fear of how much further from each other life could still take them.

"Come into my room," said George when they got upstairs. "That's the most comfortable place."

He sat down on his comfortable chair by his secretary. Felician lounged in the corner on a little green leather ottoman which was near the writing-table and listened quietly.

George told him the name of his mistress, spoke of her with heartfelt sympathy, and asked Felician, in case anything should happen to him, George, in the near future to undertake to look after the mother and her child. He left so much of his fortune as was still available to the child, of course. The mother was to have the usufruct until the child became of age.

When George had finished Felician said with a smile after a short silence: "Oh well, you've got every reason to hope that you will come back as whole and sound from your journey as I will from Africa, and so our conversation has probably only an academic significance."

"I hope so too, of course. But at any rate it reassures me, Felician, that you know all about my secret, and that I can be free from anxiety in every way."

"Yes, of course you can." He shook hands with his brother. Then he got up and walked up and down the room. Finally he said: "You have no thought of legitimising your relationship?"

"Not for the time being. One can never tell what the future may bring forth."

Felician remained standing. "Well...."

"Are you in favour of my marrying?" exclaimed George with some astonishment.

"Not at all."

"Felician, be frank, please."

"Look here, one should not advise any one in affairs like that. Not even one's own brother."

"But if I ask you, Felician? It seems to me as though there is something in the business you didn't quite like."

"Well, it is like this, George.... You won't misunderstand me.... I know of course that you are not thinking of leaving her in the lurch. On the contrary, I am convinced that you will behave all through far more nobly than any ordinary man in your position. But the question is really this, would you have let yourself go into the thing if you had considered the consequences from every point of view?"

"That of course is very hard to answer," said George.

"I mean just this: Did you intend ... not to make her your companion for life, but to have a child by her all the same?"

"Great heavens, who thinks of that? Of course if one had wanted to be so absolutely on the safe side——"

Felician interrupted him. "Does she know that you are not thinking of marrying her?"

"Why, you don't think, surely, I promised her marriage?"

"No. But you did not promise to leave her stranded either."

"It would have been equally mean if I had promised, Felician. The whole thing came about as affairs like that always do, developed without any definite plan right up to the present time."

"Yes, that is all right. The only question is whether one is not more or less under an obligation to have definite plans in really vital matters."

"Possibly.... But that was never my line, unfortunately."

Felician remained standing in front of George, looked at him affectionately and nodded a few times.

"That is quite true, George. You are not angry with me.... But now that we are talking about it.... Of course I am not suggesting I have any right to lecture you on your mode of life...."

"Go ahead, Felician.... I mean if.... It really does me good." He stroked him lightly on the hand which lay on the back of the ottoman.

"Well, there is not much more to be said. I only mean that in everything you do there is just ... the same lack of system. Look here, to talk of another important matter, I personally am quite convinced of your talent and many others are, too. But you really work damned little, don't you? And fame doesn't come of itself, even when one...."

"Quite so. But I don't work as little as you think, Felician, it is only that work is such a peculiar business with people of my temperament. Frequently when one is out for a walk or even asleep one gets all kinds of ideas.... And then in the autumn...."

"Yes, yes, we hope so, though I am afraid that you won't be able to live on your salary at the commencement, and it is very questionable how long your little money will hold out with your mode of life. I tell you candidly, when you mentioned a few moments ago the sum which you were able to leave to your child I had quite a shock."

"Be patient, Felician. In three or five years, when I have my opera finished...." He spoke in an ironical tone.

"Are you really writing an opera, George?"

"I am beginning one shortly."

"Who is doing the libretto for you?"

"Heinrich Bermann. Of course you scowl again."

"My dear George, I have always been very far from lecturing you in any way about the people you associate with. It is quite natural that you with your intellectual tastes should live in a different set and mix with different people to those I do, people whom I should probably find rather less to my taste. But so long as Herr Bermann's libretto is good you have my blessing ... and Herr Bermann, of course, too."

"The libretto is not ready yet, only the scenario."

Felician could not help laughing. "So that's how your opera stands! I only hope the theatre is already built at which you are going to get a post as conductor."

"Come, come," said George, somewhat hurt.

"Forgive me," replied Felician, "I have not really any doubts about your future. I should only like you yourself to do a bit more towards it. I really should be so ... proud, George, if you were to do anything great, and it, I'm sure, only depends on yourself. Willy Eissler, who is a man of genuine musical gifts, told me again only the other day that he thinks more of you than of most of the young composers."

"On the strength of the few songs of mine which he knows? You're a good fellow, Felician, but there is really no need for you to encourage me. I already know what I have got in me, only I must be more industrious, and my going away will do me quite a lot of good. It does one good to get out of one's usual surroundings for a time, like this. And this time it is quite different from last. It is the first time, Felician, that I have had anything to do with a person who is absolutely my equal, who is more ... whom I can treat as a true friend as well, and the consciousness that I am going to have a child, and by her, too, is, in spite of all the accompanying circumstances, rather pleasant."

"I can quite understand that," said Felician, and contemplated George seriously and affectionately.

The clock on the writing-table struck two.

"What, so late already," cried Felician, "and I have got to pack early to-morrow. Well, we can talk over everything at breakfast to-morrow. Well, good-night, George."

"Good-night, Felician. Thank you," he added with emotion.

"What are you thanking me for, George? You really are funny!" They shook hands and then kissed each other, which they had not done for quite a long time, and George resolved to call his child Felician if it was to be a boy, and he rejoiced at the good omen of a name which had so happy a ring.

After his brother's departure George felt as deserted as though he had never had another friend. Living in the great lonely house, where he seemed to be weighed down by a mood like that which had followed the first weeks after his father's death, made him feel depressed.

He regarded the days which still had to elapse before the departure as a transition period, in which it was not worth while starting anything. The hours he spent with his mistress in the room opposite the church became colourless and blank. A psychological change, too, seemed to be now taking place in Anna herself. She was frequently irritable, then taciturn again, almost melancholy, and George was often overcome by so great a sense of ennui when he was with her that he felt quite nervous of the next month in which they would be thrown completely into each other's society. Of course the journey in itself promised change enough, but how would it be in the subsequent months which would have to be spent somewhere in the neighbourhood of Vienna? He must also think about a companion for Anna; but he was still putting off speaking to her about it, when Anna herself came to him with a piece of news which was calculated to remove that difficulty, and at the same time to raise another one, in the simplest way conceivable. Anna had recently, particularly since she had gradually given up her lessons, become more and more intimate with Therese, and had confided everything to her, and so it soon came about that Therese's mother was also in the secret. This lady was much more congenial to Anna than her own mother, who after a slight glimmer of understanding had held aloof, aggrieved and depressed, from her erring daughter.

Frau Golowski not only declared herself ready to live with Anna in the country, but even promised to discover the little house which George had not been able to find, while the young couple were away. However much this willingness suited George's convenience, he found it none the less somewhat painful to be under an obligation to this old woman, who was a stranger to him, and in moments when he was out of temper it struck him as almost grotesque that it should be Leo's mother and Berthold's father, of all people, who should be fated to play so important a part in so momentous an event in Anna's life.

George paid his farewell visit at Ehrenbergs' on a fine May afternoon three days before he went away.

He had only rarely shown himself there since that Christmas celebration and his conversations with Else had remained on the most innocent of footings. She confessed to him, as though to a friend who could not now misunderstand remarks of that character, that she felt more and more unsettled at home. In particular the atmosphere of the house, as George had frequently noticed before, seemed to be permanently overcast by the bad relations between father and son. When Oskar came in at the door with his nonchalant aristocratic swagger and began to talk in his Viennese aristocratic accent, his father would turn scornfully away, or would be unable to suppress allusions to the fact that he could make an end this very day of all that aristocracy by stopping or lowering his so-called allowance, which as a matter of fact was neither more nor less than pocket-money. If, on his side, his father began to talk Yiddish, as he was most fond of doing in front of company, and with obvious malice, Oskar would bite his lips and make a point of leaving the room. So it was only very rarely during the last few months that father and son stayed in Vienna or in Neuhaus at the same time. They both found each other's presence almost intolerable.

When George came in to Ehrenbergs' the room was almost in darkness. The marble Isis gleamed from behind the pianoforte, and the twilight of the late afternoon was falling in the alcove where mother and daughter sat opposite each other. For the first time the appearance of these two women struck George as somewhat strangely pathetic. A vague feeling floated up in his mind that perhaps this was the last time he would see this picture, and Else's smile shone towards him with such sweet melancholy, that he thought for a whole minute: might I not have found my happiness here, after all?

He now sat next to Frau Ehrenberg (who was going on quietly knitting) opposite Else, smoked a cigarette and felt quite at home. He explained that, fascinated by the tempting spring weather, he was starting on his projected journey earlier than he had intended, and that he would probably prolong it until the summer.

"And we are going to Auhof as early as the middle of May this time," said Frau Ehrenberg, "and we certainly count upon seeing you down there this year."

"If you are not elsewhere engaged," added Else with a perfectly straight face.

George promised to come in August, at any rate for some days. The conversation then turned on Felician and Willy, who had started with their party a few days ago from Biskra on their hunting expedition in the desert; on Demeter Stanzides, who announced his immediate intention of resigning from the army and retiring to an estate in Hungary; and finally on Heinrich Bermann of whom no one had had any news for some weeks.

"Who knows if he will ever come back to Vienna at all?" said Else.

"Why shouldn't he? What makes you think that, Fräulein Else?"

"Upon my word, perhaps he'll marry that actress and trot about the world with her."

George shrugged his shoulders ... he didn't know personally of any actress with whom Heinrich was mixed up, and he ventured to express a doubt whether Heinrich would ever marry any one, whether she was a Princess or a circus rider.

"It would be rather a pity if Bermann were to," said Frau Ehrenberg, without taking any notice of George's discretion. "I certainly think that young people take these matters either too lightly or too seriously."

Else followed up the idea: "Yes, it is strange, all you men are either cleverer or much sillier in these matters than in any other, although really it is just in such crucial moments of one's life, that one ought as far as possible to be one's ordinary self."

"My dear Else," said George casually, "once one's passions are set going——"

"Yes, when they are set going," emphasised Frau Ehrenberg.

"Passions!" exclaimed Else. "I believe that like all other great things in the world, they are really something quite rare."

"What do you know, my child?" said Frau Ehrenberg.

"At any rate I've never so far seen anything of that kind in my immediate environment," explained Else.

"Who knows if you would discover it," remarked George, "even though it did come once in a way quite near you? Viewed from outside a flirtation and a life's tragedy may sometimes look quite the same."

"That is certainly not true," said Else. "Passion is something that is bound to betray itself."

"How do you manage to know that, Else?" objected Frau Ehrenberg. "Passions can often conceal themselves deeper than any ordinary trumpery little emotion, for the very reason that there is usually more at stake."

"I think," replied George, "that it is a very personal matter. There are, of course, people who have everything written on their forehead, and others who are impenetrable; being impenetrable is quite as much a talent as anything else."

"It can be trained too, like anything else," said Else.

The conversation stuck for a moment, as is apt to occur when the personal application that lies behind some general observation flashes out only too palpably.

Frau Ehrenberg started a new topic. "Have you been composing anything nice, George?" she asked.

"A few trifles for the piano. My quintette will soon be ready too."

"The quintette is beginning to grow mythical," said Else discontentedly.

"Else!" said her mother.

"Well, it really would be a good thing, if he were to be more industrious."

"You are perhaps right about that," replied George.

"I think artists used to work much more in former days than they do now."

"The great ones," qualified George.

"No, all," persisted Else.

"Perhaps it is a good thing that you are going to travel," said Frau Ehrenberg, "for apparently you've too many distractions here."

"He'll let himself be distracted anywhere," asserted Else sternly. "Even in Iglau, or wherever else he happens to be next year."

"That's why I've never yet thought of your going away," said Frau Ehrenberg and shook her head; "and your brother will be in Sophia or Athens next year and Stanzides in Hungary ... it's really a great pity to think of all the nicest men being scattered like this to the four corners of the world."

"If I were a man," said Else, "I would scatter too."

George smiled. "You're dreaming of a journey round the world in a white yacht, Madeira, Ceylon, San Francisco."

"Oh no, I shouldn't like to be without a profession, but I should probably have been an officer in the merchant service."

"Won't you be kind enough"—Frau Ehrenberg turned to George—"to play us one or two of your new things?"

"Delighted, I'm sure." He got up from the recess and walked towards the window into the darkness of the room. Else got up and turned on the light on top. George opened the piano, sat down and played his ballads.

Else had sat down in an arm-chair and as she sat there, with her arm resting on the side of the chair and her head resting on her arm in the pose of a grande dame and with the melancholy expression of a precocious child, George felt again strangely thrilled by her look. He was not feeling very satisfied with his ballad to-day, and was fully conscious that he was endeavouring to help out its effect by putting too much expression into his playing.

Hofrat Wilt stepped softly into the room and made a sign that they were not to disturb themselves. He then remained standing by the door leaning against the wall, tall, superior, good-natured, with his closely-cropped grey hair, until George ended his performance with some emphatic harmonies. They greeted each other. Wilt congratulated George on being a free man and being now able to travel South. "I'm sorry to say I can't do it," he added, "and all the same one has at times a vague notion that even though one were not to visit one's office for a year on end, not the slightest change would take place in Austria." He talked with his usual irony about his profession and his Fatherland. Frau Ehrenberg retorted that there was not a man who was more patriotic, and took his calling more seriously than he himself. He agreed. But he regarded Austria as an infinitely complicated instrument, which only a master could handle properly, and said that the only reason for its sounding badly so often was that every muddler tried his art upon it. "They'll go on knocking it about," he said dismally, "until all the strings break and the frame too."

When George went Else accompanied him into the empty room. She still had a few words to say to him about his ballads. She had particularly liked the middle movement. It had had such an inner glow. Anyway, she hoped he would have a good time on his journey.

He thanked her.

"So," she said suddenly, when he already had his hat in his hand, "it's really a case now of saying a final farewell to certain dreams."

"What dreams?" he asked in surprise.

"Mine of course, which you are bound to have known about by this time."

George was very astonished. She had never been so specific. He smiled awkwardly and sought for an answer. "Who knows what the future will bring forth?" he said at last lightly.

She puckered her forehead. "Why aren't you at any rate as straight with me as I am with you? I know quite well that you are not travelling alone ... I also know who is going with you ... what is more I know the whole thing. Good gracious, what haven't I known since we have known each other?"

And George heard grief and rage quivering below the surface of her words. And he knew that if he ever did make her his wife, she would make him feel that she had had to wait for him too long. He looked in front of him and maintained a silence that seemed at once guilty and defiant.

Then Else smiled brightly, held out her hand and said once again: "Bon voyage."

He pressed her hand as though he were bound to make some apology. She took it away from him, turned round and went back into the room. He still waited for a few seconds standing by the door and then hurried into the street. On the same evening George saw Leo Golowski again in the café, for the first time for many weeks. He knew from Anna that Leo had recently had to put up with a great deal of unpleasantness as a volunteer and that that "fiend in human form" in particular had persecuted him with malice, with real hatred in fact. It occurred to George to-day that Leo had greatly altered during the short time in which he had not seen him. He looked distinctly older.

"I'm very glad to get a chance of seeing you again before I leave," said George and sat down opposite him at the café table.

"You are glad," replied Leo, "that you happened to run across me again, while I positively needed to see you once again, that is the difference." His voice had even a tenderer note than usual. He looked George in the face with a kind, almost fatherly expression.

At this moment George no longer had any doubt that Leo knew everything. He felt as embarrassed for a few seconds as though he were responsible to him, was irritated at his own embarrassment and was grateful to Leo for not appearing to notice it. This evening they talked about practically nothing except music. Leo inquired after the progress of George's work, and it came about during the course of the conversation that George declared himself quite willing to play one of his newest compositions to Leo on the following Sunday afternoon. But when they took leave of each other, George suddenly had the unpleasant feeling of having passed with comparative success a theoretical examination, and of being faced to-morrow with a practical examination. What did this young man, who was so mature for his years, really want of him? Was George to prove to him that his talent entitled him to be Anna's lover or her child's father? He waited for Leo's visit with genuine repugnance. He thought for a minute of refusing to see him. But when Leo appeared with all that innocent sincerity which he so frequently liked to affect, George's mood soon became less harsh. They drank tea and smoked cigarettes and George showed him his library, the pictures which were hanging in the house, the antiquities and the weapons, and the examination feeling vanished. George sat down at the pianoforte, played a few of his earlier pieces and also his latest ones as well as the ballads, which he rendered much better than he had done yesterday at Ehrenbergs', and then some songs, while Leo followed the melody with his fingers, but with sure musical feeling. Eventually he started to play the quintette from the score. He did not succeed and Leo stationed himself at the window with the music and read it attentively.

"One can't really tell at all so far," he said. "A great deal of it indicates a dilettante with a lot of taste, other parts an artist without proper discipline. It's rather in the songs that one feels ... but feels what?... talent ... I don't know. One feels at any rate that you have distinction, real musical distinction."

"Well, that's not so much."

"As a matter of fact it's pretty little, but it doesn't prove anything against you either, since you have worked so little—worked very little and felt little."

"You think ..." George forced a sarcastic laugh.

"Oh, you've probably lived a great deal but felt ... you know what I mean, George?"

"Yes, I can imagine well enough, but you're really making a mistake; why I rather think that I have a certain tendency to sentimentalism, which I ought to combat."

"Yes, that's just it. Sentimentalism, you know, is something which is the direct antithesis to feeling, something by means of which one reassures oneself about one's lack of feeling, one's essential coldness. Sentimentalism is feeling which one has obtained, so to speak, below cost price. I hate sentimentalism."

"Hm, and yet I think that you yourself are not quite free from it."

"I am a Jew, it's a national disease with us. Our respectable members are working to change it into rage or fury. It's a bad habit with the Germans, a kind of emotional slovenliness so to speak."

"So there is an excuse for you, not for us."

"There is no excuse for diseases either if, fully realising what one is doing, one has missed one's opportunity of protecting oneself against them. But we are beginning to babble in aphorism and are consequently only on the way to half or quarter truths. Let's go back to your quintette. I like the theme of the adagio best."

George nodded. "I heard it once in Palermo."

"What," said Leo, "is it supposed to be a Sicilian melody?"

"No, it rippled to me out of the waves of the sea when I went for a walk one morning along the shore. Being alone is particularly good for my work, so is change of scene. That's why I promise myself all kinds of things from my trip." He told him about Heinrich Bermann's opera plot, which he found very stimulating. When Heinrich came back again, Leo was to make him seriously start on the libretto.

"Don't you know yet," said Leo, "his father is dead?"

"Really? When? How do you know?"

"It was in the paper this morning."

They spoke about Heinrich's relationship to the dead man and Leo declared that the world would perhaps get on better if parents would more frequently learn by the experiences of their children instead of asking their children to adapt themselves to their own hoary wisdom. The conversation then turned on the relations between fathers and sons, on true and false kinds of gratefulness, on the dying of people one held dear, on the difference between mourning and grief, on the dangers of memory and the duty of forgetting. George felt that Leo was a very serious thinker, was very solitary and knew how to be so. He felt almost fond of him when the door closed behind him in the late twilight hour and the thought that this man had been Anna's first infatuation did him good.

The remaining days passed more quickly than he anticipated, what with purchases, arrangements and all kinds of preparations. And one evening George and Anna drove after each other to the station in two separate vehicles and jestingly greeted each other in the vestibule with great politeness, as though they had been distant acquaintances who had met by accident.

"My dear Fräulein Rosner, what a fortunate coincidence! are you also going to Munich by any chance?"

"Yes, Herr Baron."

"Hullo, that's excellent! and have you a sleeping-car, my dear Fräulein?"

"Oh yes, Herr Baron, berth number five."

"How strange now, I have number six."

They then walked up and down on the platform. George was in a very good temper, and he was glad that in her English dress, narrow-brimmed travelling hat and blue veil Anna looked like an interesting foreigner. They went the length of the entire train until they came to the engine, which stood outside the station and was sending violent puffs of light-grey steam up to the dark sky. Outside green and red lamps glowed on the track with a faint light. Nervous whistles came from somewhere out of the distance and a train slowly struggled out of the darkness into the station. A red light waved magically to and fro over the ground, seemed to be miles away, stopped and was suddenly quite near. And outside, shining and losing themselves in the invisible, the lines went their way to near and far, into night and morning, into the morrow, into the inscrutable.

Anna climbed into the compartment. George remained standing outside for a while and derived amusement from watching the other travellers, those who were in an excited rush, those who preserved a dignified calm, and those who posed as being calm—and all the various types of people who were seeing their friends off: the depressed, the jolly, the indifferent.

Anna was leaning out of the window. George chatted with her, behaved as though he had not the slightest idea of leaving and then jumped in at the last minute. The train went away. People were standing on the platform, incomprehensible people who were remaining behind in Vienna, and who on their side seemed to find all the others who were now really leaving Vienna equally incomprehensible. A few pocket-handkerchiefs fluttered. The station-master stood there impressively and gazed sternly after the train. A porter in a blue-and-white striped linen blouse held a yellow bag high up and looked inquisitively into every window. Strange, thought George casually, there are people who are going away and yet leave their yellow bags behind in Vienna. Everything vanished, handkerchiefs, bags, station-master, station. The brightly-lighted signal-box, the Gloriette, the twinkling lights of the town, the little bare gardens along the embankment; and the train whizzed on through the night. George turned away from the window. Anna sat in the corner. She had taken off her hat and veil. Gentle little tears were running down her cheeks.

"Come," said George, as he embraced her and kissed her on the eyes and mouth. "Come, Anna," he repeated even more tenderly, and kissed her again. "What are you crying for, dear? It will be so nice."

"It's easy enough for you," she said, and the tears streamed on down her smiling face.

They had a beautiful time. They first stopped in Munich. They walked about in the lofty halls of the Pinakothek, stood fascinated in front of the old darkening pictures, wandered into the Glyptothek between marble gods, kings and heroes; and when Anna with a sudden feeling of exhaustion sat down on a settee she felt George's tender glance lingering over her head. They drove through the English garden, over broad avenues beneath the still leafless trees, nestling close to each other, young and happy, and were glad to think that people took them for a honeymoon couple. And they had their seats next to each other at the opera, Figaro, The Meistersingers, and Tristan, and they felt as though a resonant transparent veil were woven around them alone out of the notes they loved so well, which separated them from all the rest of the audience. And they sat, unrecognised by any one at prettily-laid little restaurant tables, ate, drank and talked in the best of spirits. And through streets that had the wondrous atmosphere of a foreign land, they wandered home to where the gentle night waited for them in the room they shared, slept peacefully cheek by cheek, and when they awoke there smiled to them from the window a friendly day with which they could do whatever they liked. They found peace in each other as they had never done before, and at last belonged to each other absolutely. Then they travelled further to meet the call of the spring; through long valleys on which the snow shone and melted, then, as though traversing one last white winter dream, over the Brenner to Bozen, where they basked in the sunbeams at noon in the dazzling market-place. On the weather-worn steps of the vast amphitheatre of Verona, beneath the cool sky of an Easter evening, George found himself at last in sight of that world of his heart's desire into which a real true love was now vouchsafed to accompany him. His own vanished boyhood greeted him out of the pale reddish distance together with all the eternal memories, in which other men and women had their share as well. Why, even a breath of those bygone days when his mother had still lived seemed to thrill already through this air with its familiar and yet foreign atmosphere. He was glad to see Venice, but it had lost its magic and was as well known as though he had only left it yesterday. He was greeted in the Piazza St. Marco by some casual Viennese acquaintances, and the veiled lady by his side in the white dress earned many an inquisitive glance. Once only, late at evening, on a gondola journey through the narrow canals did the looming palaces, which in the daylight had gradually degenerated into artificial scenery, appear to him in all the massive splendour of the dark golden glories of their past. Then came a few days in towns, which he scarcely knew or did not know at all, in which he had only spent a few hours as a boy, or had never been in at all. They walked into a dim church out of a sultry Padua afternoon, and going slowly from altar to altar contemplated the simple glorious pictures in which saints accomplished their miracles and fulfilled their martyrdoms. On a dismal rainy day a jolty gloomy carriage took them past a brick-red fort, round which lay greenish-grey water in a broad moat, through a market-square where negligently dressed citizens sat in front of the café; among silent mournful streets, where grass grew between the cobble-stones, and they had perforce to believe that this pitifully-dying petty town bore the resounding name of Ferrara. But they breathed again in Bologna, where the lively flourishing town does not simply content itself with a mere pride in its bygone glories. But it was only when George gazed at the hills of Fiesole that he felt himself greeted as it were by a second home. This was the town in which he had ceased to be a boy, the town in which the stream of life had begun to course through his veins. At many places memories floated up in his mind which he kept to himself; and when in the cathedral, where the Florentine girl had given him her final look from beneath her bridal veil, he only spoke to Anna about that hour in the Altlerchenfelder Church in that autumn evening, when they had both begun to talk with some dim presentiment about this journey, which had now become realised with such inconceivable rapidity. He showed Anna the house in which he had lived nine years ago. The same shops in which coral-dealers, watch-makers and lace-dealers hawked their wares were still underneath. As the second story was to let George would have had no difficulty in seeing immediately the room in which his mother had died. But he hesitated for a long time to set foot in the house again. It was only on the day before their departure, as though feeling that he should not put it off any more, that alone and without any previous word to Anna, he went into the house, up the stairs and into the room. The aged porter showed him round and did not recognise him. The same furniture was still all there.

His mother's bedroom looked exactly the same as it had done ten years ago, and the same brown wooden bed with its dark-green silver embroidered velvet coverlet still stood in the same corner. But none of the emotions which George had expected stirred within him. A tired memory which seemed flatter and duller than it had ever been before, ran through his soul. He stayed a long time in front of the bed with the deliberate intention of conjuring up those emotions which he felt it was his duty to feel. He murmured the word "mother," he tried to imagine the way in which she had lain here in this bed for many days and nights. He remembered the hours in which she had felt better, and he had been able to read aloud to her or to play to her on the piano in the adjoining room. He looked at the little round table standing in the corner over which his father and Felician had spoken in a soft whisper because his mother had just gone to sleep; and finally there arose up in his mind with all the sharp vividness of a theatrical scene the picture of that dreadful evening, when his father and brother had gone out, and he himself had sat at his mother's bedside quite alone with her hand in his ... he saw and heard it all over again. He remembered how she had suddenly felt ill after an extremely quiet day, how he had hurriedly opened the windows and the laughter and speeches of strange people had penetrated into the room with the warm March air, how she lay there at last with open eyes that were already blank, while her hair that only a few seconds ago had streamed in waves over her forehead and temple lay dry and dishevelled on the pillow, and her left arm hung down naked over the edge of the bed with still fingers stretched far apart. This image arose in his mind with such terrible vividness that he saw again mentally his own boyish face and heard once again his own long sobbing ... but he felt no pain. It was far too long ago—nearly ten years.

"E bellissima la vista di questa finestra," suddenly said the porter behind him as he opened the window—and human voices at once rang into the room from down below just as they had done on that long-past evening. And at the same moment he heard his mother's voice in his ear, just as he had heard it then entreating, dying ... "George ... George" ... and out of the dark corner in the place where the pillows had used to lie he saw something pale shine out towards him. He went to the window and agreed: "Bellissima vista," but in front of the beautiful view there lay as it were a dark veil. "Mother," he murmured, and once again "Mother" ... but to his own amazement he did not mean the woman who had borne him and had been buried long ago; the word was for that other woman, who was not yet a mother but who was to be in a few months ... the mother of a child of which he was the father. And the word suddenly rang out, as though some melody that had never been heard or understood before, were now sounding, as though bells with mystic chiming were swinging in the distant future. And George felt ashamed that he had come here alone, had, as it were, almost stolen here. It was now quite out of the question to tell Anna that he had been here.

The next day they took the train to Rome. And while George felt fresher, more at home, more in the vein for enjoyment, with each succeeding day, Anna began to suffer seriously from a feeling of exhaustion with increasing frequency. She would often remain behind alone in the hotel, while he strolled about the streets, wandered through the Vatican, went to the Forum and the Palatine. She never kept him back, but he nevertheless felt himself bound to cheer her up before he went out, and got into the habit of saying: "Well, you'll keep that for another time, I hope we shall soon be coming here again." Then she would smile in her arch way, as though she did not doubt now that she would one day be his wife; and he himself could not help owning that he no longer regarded that development as impossible. For it had gradually become almost impossible for him to realise that they were to say goodbye for ever and to go their several ways this autumn. Yet during this period the words with which they spoke about a remote future were always vague. He had fear of it, and she felt that she would be doing well not to arouse that fear, and it was just during these Roman days, when he would often walk about alone in the foreign town for hours on end, that he felt as though he were at times slipping away from Anna in a manner that was not altogether unpleasant.

One evening he had wandered about amid the ruins of the Imperial Palace until the approach of dusk and from the height of the Palatine Hill he had seen the sun set in the Campagna with all the proud delight of the man who is alone. He had then gone driving for a while along the ancient wall of the city to Monte Pincio, and when as he leant back in the corner of his carriage he swept the roofs with his look till he saw the cupola of St. Peter's, he felt with deep emotion that he was now experiencing the most sublime hour of the whole journey. He did not get back to the hotel till late, and found Anna standing by the window pale and in tears, with red spots on her swollen cheeks. She had been dying of nervousness for the last two hours, had imagined that he had had an accident, had been attacked, had been killed. He reassured her, but did not find the words of affection which she wanted, for he felt in some unworthy way a sense of being tied and not free. She felt his coldness and gave him to understand that he did not love her enough; he answered with an irritation that verged on despair. She called him callous and selfish. He bit his lip, made no further answer, and walked up and down the room. Still unreconciled they went into the dining-room, where they took their meal in silence, and went to bed without saying good-night.

The following days were under the shadow of this scene. It was only on the journey to Naples, when they were alone in the compartment, that in their joy over the new scenery to which they were flying they found each other again. From henceforward he scarcely left her a single minute, she seemed to him helpless and somewhat pathetic. He gave up visiting museums since she could not accompany him. They drove together to Posilippo and walked in the Villa Nationale. In the excursion through Pompeii he walked next to her sedan-chair like a patient affectionate husband, and while the guide was giving his descriptive account in bad French, George took Anna's hand, kissed it and endeavoured in enthusiastic words to make her share in the delight that he himself felt once more in this mysterious roofless town, which after a burial of two thousand years had gradually returned street by street, house by house, to meet the unchanging light of that azure sky. And when they stopped at a place where some labourers were just engaged in extricating with careful movements of their shovels a broken pillar out of the ashes he pointed it out to Anna with eyes which shone as brightly as though he had been storing up this sight for her for a long time, and as though everything which had happened before had simply been leading up to the fulfilment of his purpose of taking her to this particular place at this particular minute and showing her this particular wonder.

On a dark blue May night they lay in two chairs covered with tarpaulins on the deck of the ship that was taking them to Genoa. An old Frenchman with clear eyes, who had sat opposite them at dinner, stood near them for a while and drew their attention to the stars that hung in the infinitude like heavy silver drops. He named some of them by name, politely and courteously, as though he felt it incumbent upon him to introduce to each other the shining wanderers of heaven and the young married couple. He then said good-night and went down into his cabin. But George thought of his lonely journey over the same route and under the same sky in the previous spring after his farewell from Grace. He had told Anna about her, not so much from any emotional necessity, as in order to free his past from that atmosphere of sinister mystery in which it often seemed to Anna to disappear, by the conjuring up into life of a specific shape and the designation of a specific name. Anna knew of Labinski's death, of George's conversation with Grace at Labinski's grave, of George's stay with her in Sicily. He had even shown her a picture of Grace; and yet he thought to himself with a slight shudder how little Anna herself knew of this very epoch of his life, which he had described to her with an almost reckless lack of reserve; and he felt how impossible it was to give any other person any idea of a period which that person had not actually lived through, and of the contents of so many days and nights every minute of which had been full of vivid life. He realised the comparative insignificance of the little lapses from truth of which he frequently allowed himself to be guilty in his narrative, compared with that ineradicable taint of falseness to which every memory gives birth on its short journey from the lips of one person to the ear of another. And if Anna herself at some later time wanted to describe to some friend, some new lover, as honestly as she possibly could, the time which she spent with George, what after all could that friend really learn? Not much more than a story such as he had read hundreds of times over in books: a story of a young creature who had loved a young man, had travelled about with him, had felt ecstasy and at times tedium, had felt herself at one with him, and yet had frequently felt lonely. And even if she should make an attempt to give a specific account of every minute ... there still remained an irrevocable past, and for him who has not lived through it himself the past can never be the truth.

The stars glistened above him. Anna's head had sunk slowly upon his breast and he supported it gently with his hands. Only the slight ripple in the depths betrayed that the ship was sailing onward. But it still went on towards the morning, towards home, towards the future.

The hour which had loomed over them so long in silence seemed now about to strike and to begin. George suddenly felt that he no longer had his fate in his own hand. Everything was going its course. And he now felt in his whole body, even to the hairs of his head, that the ship beneath his feet was relentlessly hurrying forward.

They only remained a day in Genoa. Both longed for rest, and George for his work as well. They meant to stay only a few weeks at an Italian lake and to travel home in the middle of June. The house in which Anna was going to live would be bound to be ready by then. Frau Golowski had found out half-a-dozen suitable ones, sent specific details to Anna and was waiting for her decision, though she still continued looking for others in case of emergency. They travelled from Milan to Genoa, but they could not stand the noisy life of a town any longer and left for Lugano the very next day.

They had been staying here for a period of four weeks and every morning George went along the road which took him, as it did to-day, along the cheerful shore of the lake, past Paradiso to the bend, where there was a view which every time he longed to see again. Only a few days of their stay were still before them. In spite of the excellent state of Anna's health since the beginning of their stay the time had arrived to return to the vicinity of Vienna, so as to be able to be ready confidently for all emergencies. The days in Lugano struck George as the best he had experienced since his departure from Vienna. And he asked himself during many a beautiful moment, if the time he was spending here was not perhaps the best time of his whole life. He had never felt himself so free from desire, so serene both in anticipation and memory, and he saw with joy that Anna also was completely happy. Expectant gentleness shone in her forehead, her eyes gleamed with arch merriment, as at the time when George had wooed for their possession. Without anxiety, without impatience and lifted by the consciousness of her budding motherhood far above the memory of home prejudices or any question of future complications, she anticipated with ecstasy the great hour when she was to give back to the waiting world as an animate creature, that which her body had drunk in during a half-conscious moment of ecstasy. George saw with joy the maturing in her of the comrade that he had hoped to find in her from the beginning, but who had so frequently escaped him in the course of the last few months. In their conversations about his works (all of which she had carefully gone through), about the theory of the song, about the more general musical questions, she revealed to him more knowledge and feeling than he had ever suspected she had in her. And he himself, though he did not actually compose much, felt as though he were making real strides forward. Melodies resounded within him, harmonies heralded their approach, and he remembered with deep understanding a remark of Felician's, who had once said after he had not had a sword in his hand for months on end, that his arm had had some good ideas during this period. The future, too, occasioned him no anxiety. He knew that serious work would begin as soon as he got back to Vienna, and then his way would lie before him, clear and unencumbered.

George stood for a long time by the bend in the road which had been the object of his walk. A short broad tongue of land, thickly overgrown with low shrubs, stretched from here straight into the lake, while a narrow gently sloping path led in a few steps to a wooden seat which was invisible from the street and on which George was always accustomed to sit down a little before returning to the hotel.

"How many more times," he could not help thinking to-day. "Five or six times perhaps and then back to Vienna again." And he asked himself what would happen if they did not go back, if they settled down in some house somewhere in Italy or Switzerland, and began to build up with their child a new life in the double peacefulness of Nature and distance. What would happen?... Nothing. Scarcely any one would be particularly surprised. And no one would miss either him or her, miss them with real grief. These reflections made his mood flippant rather than melancholy; the only thought that made him depressed was that he was frequently overcome by a kind of homesickness, a kind of desire in fact to see certain specific persons. And even now, while he was drinking in the lake air, surrendering himself to the blue of this half foreign, half familiar sky above him and enjoying all the pleasure of solitude and retirement, his heart would beat when he thought of the woods and hills around Vienna, of the Ringstrasse, the club and his big room with the view of the Stadtpark. And he would have felt anxious if his child had not been going to be born in Vienna. It suddenly occurred to him that another letter from Frau Golowski must have arrived to-day together with many other communications from Vienna, and he therefore decided to take the road round by the post-office before going back to the hotel. For following his habit during the whole trip he had his letters addressed there and not to the hotel, since he felt that this would give him a freer hand in dealing with any outside emergency. He did not, as a matter of fact, get many letters from Vienna. There was usually in spite of their brevity a certain element in Heinrich's letters which, as George quite appreciated, was less due to any particular need of sympathy on the part of the author than to the circumstance that it was an integral part of his literary calling to breathe the breath of life into all the sentences which he wrote. Felician's letters were as cool as though he had completely forgotten that last heartfelt talk in George's room and that brotherly kiss with which they had taken leave of each other.... He presumes, no doubt, thought George, that his letters will be read by Anna too, and does not feel himself bound to give this stranger an insight into his private affairs and his private feelings. Nürnberger had sent a few short answers to George's picture-postcards, while in answer to a letter from Rome, in which George had referred to his sincere appreciation of the walks they had had together in the early spring, Nürnberger expressed his regret in ironically apologetic phrases that he had told George on those excursions such a lot about his own family affairs which could not interest him in the slightest. A letter from old Eissler had reached him at Naples, informing him that there was no prospect of a vacancy for the following year at the Detmold Court Theatre, but that George had been invited through Count Malnitz to be present at the rehearsals and performances as a "visitor by special request," and that this was an opportunity which might perhaps pave the way to something more definite in the future. George had given the proposition his polite consideration, but had little inclination for the time being to stay in the foreign town for any length of time with such vague prospects, and had decided to look out for a permanent appointment as soon as he arrived at Vienna.

Apart from this there was no personal note in any of the letters from home. The remembrances to him which Frau Rosner felt in duty bound to append to her letters to her daughter made no particular appeal, although recently they had been addressed not to the Herr Baron but to George. He felt certain that Anna's parents were simply resigned to what they could not alter, but that they felt it grievously all the same, and had not shown themselves as broad-minded as would have been desirable.

In accordance with his habit George did not go back along the bank. Passing through narrow streets between garden walls, then under arcades and finally over a wide space from which there was another clear view of the lake, he arrived in front of the post-office, whose bright yellow paint reflected the dazzling rays of the sun. A young lady whom George had already seen in the distance walking up and down the pavement, remained standing as he approached. She was dressed in white and carried a white sunshade spread out over a broad straw hat with a red ribbon. When George was quite near she smiled, and he now suddenly saw a well-known face beneath the white spotted tulle veil.

"Is it really you, Fräulein Therese?" he exclaimed as he took the hand which she held out to him.

"How do you do, Baron?" she replied innocently, as though this meeting were the most ordinary event imaginable. "How is Anna?"

"Very well, thanks. Of course you will come and see her?"

"If I may."

"But tell me now, what are you doing here? Can it be that you"—and his glance swept her in amazement from top to toe—"are making a political tour?"

"I can't exactly say that," she replied, pushing out her chin, without that movement having its usual effect of making her face appear ugly, "it's more of a holiday jaunt." And her face shone with a genuine smile as she saw George's glance turn towards the door, from which Demeter Stanzides had just come out in a striped black-and-white flannel suit. He lifted his grey felt hat in salutation and shook hands with George.

"Good-morning, Baron. Glad to see you again."

"I am very glad, too, Herr Stanzides."

"No letter for me?" Therese turned to Demeter.

"No, Therese. Only a few cards for me," and he put them in his pocket.

"How long have you been here?" inquired George, endeavouring to exhibit as little surprise as possible.

"We arrived yesterday," replied Demeter.

"Straight from Vienna?" asked George.

"No, from Milan. We have been travelling for eight days. We were first in Venice, that is the orthodox thing to do," added Therese, pulled down her veil and took Demeter's arm.

"You been away much longer?" said Demeter. "I saw a card from you some weeks back at Ehrenbergs', the house of the Vettii, Pompeii."

"Yes, I've had a wonderful trip."

"Well, we'll have a look round the place a bit," said Therese, "and besides, we don't want to detain the Baron any more. I am sure he wants to go and fetch his letters."

"Oh, there is no hurry about that. Anyway, we'll see each other again."

"Will you give us the pleasure, Baron," said Demeter, "of lunching with us to-day at the Europe? That's where we put up."

"Thanks very much, but I'm afraid it's impossible. But ... but perhaps you could manage to dine with ... with ... us at the Park Hotel, yes? At half-past seven if that's all right for you. I'll have it served in the garden, under an awfully fine plane-tree, where we usually take our meals."

"Yes," said Therese, "we accept with thanks. Perhaps I'll come in an hour earlier and have a quiet chat with Anna."

"Good," replied George, "she will be very glad."

"Well, till the evening, Baron," said Demeter, shook hands with him heartily and added: "Please give my kind regards at home."

Therese flashed George an appreciative look, and then went on her way with Demeter towards the bank of the lake.

George looked after them. If I hadn't known her, he thought, Demeter could have introduced her to me straight away as his wife, née Princess X. How strange, those two.... He then went into the hall, had his correspondence given to him at the counter and ran cursorily through it. The first thing which caught his eye was a card from Leo Golowski. There was nothing on it except "Dear George, mind you have a good time." Then there was a card from the Waldsteingarten in the Prater, "We have just emptied our glasses to the health of our runaway friend. Guido Schönstein, Ralph Skelton, the Rattenmamsell."

George wanted to read the letters from Felician, Frau Rosner and Heinrich quietly at home with Anna. He was also in a hurry to inform Anna of the news of the strange couple's arrival. He was not quite free from anxiety, for Anna's conventional instincts had a knack of waking up occasionally in a quite unexpected manner. Anyway, George decided to tell her of his invitation to Demeter and Therese as though it were an absolute matter of course and was quite ready, in case she should feel hurt or irritated or even have doubts about the matter, to oppose such an attitude firmly and resolutely. He himself was very glad of the evening which was before him after the many weeks that he had spent exclusively in Anna's society. He almost felt a little envious of Demeter, who was on an irresponsible pleasure-trip like he himself when he had gone travelling with Grace in the previous year. Then it occurred to him that he liked Therese better than ever. In spite of the numerous pretty women whom he had met in the course of the last month he had never felt seriously tempted, even though Anna was losing more and more of her womanly grace. To-day for the first time he felt a desire for new embraces.

He soon saw Anna's light-blue morning dress shining through the railings of the balcony. George whistled the first notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which was his usual method of announcing himself, and the pale gentle face of his beloved immediately appeared over the railings and her big eyes greeted him with a smile. He held up the packet of letters, she nodded with pleasure and he hurried quickly up to her room and on to the balcony. She was reclining in a cane chair in front of the little table with the green coverlet, on which some needlework was lying, as was nearly always the case when George came home from his morning walk. He kissed her on the forehead and on the mouth. "Well, whom do you think I met?" he asked hurriedly.

"Else Ehrenberg," answered Anna, without considering.

"What an idea? How could she get here?"

"Well," said Anna slyly, "she might have travelled off to find you."

"She might, but she didn't. So guess again. I give you three guesses."

"Heinrich Bermann."

"Nowhere near it. Besides there is a letter from him. So guess again."

She reflected. "Demeter Stanzides," she then said.

"What, do you really know something?"

"What should I know? Is he really here?"

"By Jove, you are positively blushing. Ho ho!" He knew of her weakness for Demeter's melancholy cavalier beauty but did not feel the slightest trace of jealousy.

"So it is Stanzides?" she asked.

"Yes, it is Stanzides right enough. But with all the will in the world I can't find anything remarkable about that. It's not remarkable, either. But if you guess whom he is with...."

"With Sissy Wyner."

"But...."

"Well, I was thinking of marriage.... That happens too sometimes."

"No, not with Sissy, and not married, but with your friend Therese, and as unmarried as possible."

"Get along...."

"I tell you, with Therese. They've been travelling for eight days. What have you got to say to that? They have been in Venice and Milan. Had you any idea of it?"

"No."

"Really not?"

"Really not. You know of course that Therese only once wrote me a line, and you read her letter with your well-known interest."

"You're not astonished enough."

"Good gracious, I always knew that she had good taste."

"So has Demeter," exclaimed George with conviction.

"Elective affinities," remarked Anna, elevating her eyebrows, and went on crocheting.

"And so this is the mother of my child," said George, with a merry shake of his head.

She looked at him with a smile. "When is she coming to see me, then?"

"In the afternoon about six, I think. And ... and Stanzides is coming too ... a bit later. They are going to dine with us. You don't mind?"

"Mind? I'm very glad," replied Anna simply.

George was agreeably surprised. If Anna in her present condition had met Stanzides in Vienna!... he thought. How being away from one's usual environment frees and purifies!

"What news did they tell you?" asked Anna.

"We stood chatting together at the post-office for scarcely three minutes. He sends his regards to you, by the way."

Anna made no answer and it seemed to George as though her thoughts were travelling again on extremely conventional lines.

"Have you been up long?" he asked quickly.

"Yes, I have been sitting here on the balcony for quite a long time. I even went to sleep a bit, the air is so enervating to-day somehow. And I dreamed, too."

"What did you dream about?"

"Of the child," she said.

"Again?"

She nodded. "Just the same as the other day. I was sitting here on the balcony in my dream, and had it in my arms at the breast...."

"But what was it, a boy or a girl?"

"I don't know. Just a child. So tiny and so sweet. And the joy was so.... No I won't give it up," she said softly with closed eyes.

He stood leaning on the railing and felt the light noon wind stroke his hair. "If you don't want to give it out to nurse," he said, "well you mustn't." And the thought ran through his mind, "Wouldn't it be the most convenient thing to marry her?..." But something or other kept him back from saying so. They were both silent. He had laid the letters in front of him on the table. He now took them up and opened one. "Let's see, first, what your mother writes?" he said.

Frau Rosner's letter contained the news that all was well at home, that they would all be very glad to see Anna again, and that Josef had got a post on the staff of the Volksbote with a salary of fifty gulden a month. Further, an inquiry had come from Frau Bittner as to when Anna was coming back from Dresden, and if it was really certain that she would be back again next autumn, because otherwise they would of course have to look about for a new teacher.... Anna stood motionless and expressed no opinion.

Then George read out Heinrich's letter. It ran as follows:

"Dear George,

"I am very glad that you will be back so soon, and prefer to tell you so to-day, because once you are there I shall never tell you how very glad I shall be to see you. A few days ago, when I went for a lonely cycle ride along the Danube, I genuinely missed you. What an overwhelming atmosphere of loneliness these banks have! I remember having once felt like that five or six years ago on a Sunday, when I was in what is technically known as 'jolly company,' and was sitting in the Kloster-neuburger beer-house in the large garden with its view of the mountains and the fields. How it ascends from the depths of the waters, loneliness I mean, which certainly is quite a different thing to what one usually thinks it is. It is very far from being the opposite of society. Yet it is only perhaps when one is with other people that one has a right to feel lonely. Just take this as an aphoristical humorously untrue special supplement, or treat it as such and lay it aside. To come back to my ride along the banks of the Danube—it was on that same rather sultry evening that I had all kinds of good ideas, and I hope soon to be able to tell you a lot of startling news about Ägidius, for that's the name that the murderous melancholy youth has got at last, about the deep-thinking impenetrable prince, about the humorous Duke Heliodorus, the name by which I have the honour of introducing to you the Princess's betrothed, and especially about the princess herself, who seems to be a far more remarkable person than I originally supposed."

"That's to do with the opera plot?" asked Anna, dropping her work.

"Of course," replied George, and went on reading.

"You must also know, my dear friend, that I have finished during the last week some verses for the first act, which so far are not particularly immortal, verses which until some further development, so long I mean, as they are without your music, will hop about the world like wingless angels. The subject-matter appeals to me extraordinarily, and I myself am curious to know what I am really going to make of it. I've begun all kinds of other things as well ... sketched things out ... thought things over. And to put it shortly and with a certain amount of cheek I feel as though a new phase were heralding itself within me. This sounds of course greater cheek than it really is. For chimney-sweeps, ice-cream vendors and colour-sergeants have their phases as well. People of our temperament always recognise it at once. What I regard as very probable is that I shall soon leave the fantastic element in which I now feel so much at home, and will either move up or move down into something extremely real. What would you say, for example, if I were to go in for a political comedy? I feel already that the word 'real' is not quite the right one. For in my view politics is the most fantastic element in which persons can possibly move, the only thing is they don't notice it.... This is the point I ought to drive home. This occurred to me the other day when I was present at a political meeting (untrue, I always get these thoughts). Yes—a meeting of working men and women in the Brigittenau in which I found myself next to Mademoiselle Therese Golowski, and at which I was compelled to hear seven speeches about universal suffrage. Each of the speakers—Therese was one of them, too—spoke just as though the solution of that question was the most important thing in the world to him or her personally, and I don't think that any of them had an idea that the whole question was a matter of colossal indifference to them at the real bottom of their hearts. Therese was very indignant of course when I enlightened her on the point, and declared that I had been infected by the poisonous scepticism of Nürnberger, of whom as a matter of fact I'm seeing far too much. She always makes a point of running him down, since he asked her some time ago in the café whether she was going to have her hair done high or in plaits at her next trial for high treason. Anyway, I find it very nice seeing a lot of Nürnberger. When I'm having my bad days, there is no one who receives me with more kindness. Only there are many days whose badness he doesn't suspect or doesn't want to know of. There are various troubles which I feel that he fails to appreciate and which I've given up talking to him about."

"What does he mean?" interrupted Anna.

"The affair with the actress, clearly," replied George, and went on reading.

"On the other hand he is inclined to make up for that by taking other troubles of mine too seriously. That is probably my fault and not his. He manifested a sympathy towards me for the loss I sustained by my father's death, which I confess made me positively ashamed; for though it hit me dreadfully hard we had grown so aloof from one another quite a long time before his madness burst upon him, that his death simply signified a further and more ghastly barrier rather than a new experience."

"Well?" asked Anna, as George stopped.

"I've just got an idea."

"What is it?"

"Nürnberger's sister lies buried in the Cadenabbia cemetery. I told you about her. I'll run over one of these days."

Anna nodded. "Perhaps I'll go too, if I feel all right. From all I hear of him I find Nürnberger much more sympathetic than that horrible egoist your friend Heinrich."

"You think so?"

"But really, the way he writes about his father. It is almost intolerable."

"Hang it all! if people who have grown so estranged as those two——"

"All the same, I haven't really very much in common with my own parents temperamentally either, and yet.... If I.... No, no, I prefer not to talk about such things. Won't you go on reading?"

George read:

"There are more serious things than death, things which are certainly sadder, because these other things lack the finality which takes away the sadness of death, if viewed from the higher standpoint. For instance, there are living ghosts who walk about the streets in the clear daylight with eyes that have died long ago and yet see, ghosts who sit down next to one and talk with a human voice that has a far more distant ring than if it came from a grave. And one might go so far as to say that the essential awfulness of death is revealed to a far greater extent in moments when one has experiences like this, than at those times when one stands near and watches somebody being lowered into the earth ... however near that somebody was."

George involuntarily dropped the letter and Anna said with emphasis: "Well, you can certainly keep him to yourself—your friend Heinrich."

"Yes," replied George slowly. "He is often a bit affected, and yet ... hallo, there goes the first bell for lunch. Let's read quickly through to the end."

"But I must now tell you what happened yesterday: the most painful and yet ridiculous affair which I have come across for a long time, and I am sorry to say the persons concerned are our good friends the Ehrenbergs, father and son."

"Oh," cried Anna involuntarily.

George had quickly run through the lines which followed and shook his head.

"What is it?" inquired Anna.

"It is.... Just listen," and he went on reading.

"You are no doubt aware of the growing acuteness of the relations between Oskar and the old man in the course of the last year. You also know the real reasons for it, so that I can just inform you of what has taken place without going into the motives for it any further. Well, it's just like this. Yesterday Oskar passes by the Church of St. Michael about twelve o'clock midday and takes off his hat. You know that at the present time piety is about the smartest craze going, and so perhaps it is unnecessary to go into any further explanation, as, for example, that a few young aristocrats happened just to be coming out of church and that Oskar wanted to behave as a Catholic for their special benefit. God knows how often he has previously been guilty of this imposture without being found out, but as luck would have it, it happens yesterday that old Ehrenberg comes along the road at the same moment. He sees Oskar taking off his hat in front of the church door ... and attacked by a fit of uncontrollable rage he gives his offspring a box on the ears then and there. A box on the ears! Oskar the lieutenant in the reserve! Midday in the centre of the town! So it is not particularly remarkable that the story was known all over the town the very same evening. It is already in some of the papers to-day. The Jewish ones leave it severely alone, except for a few scandal-mongering rags, the Anti-Semitic ones of course go for it hot and strong. The Christliche Volksbote is the best, and insists on both the Ehrenbergs being brought before a jury for sacrilege or blasphemy. Oskar is said to have travelled off, no one knows where, for the time being."

"A nice family!" said Anna with conviction.

George could not help laughing against his will. "My dear girl, Else is really absolutely innocent of the whole business."

The bell rang for the second time. They went into the dining-room and took their places at a little table by the window which was always laid for them alone. Scarcely more than a dozen visitors were sitting at the long table in the middle of the room, mostly Englishmen and Frenchmen, and also a man no longer in the first flush of youth, who had been there for two days and whom George took for an Austrian officer in mufti. Anyway he bothered about him as little as he did about the others. George had put Heinrich's letter in his pocket. It occurred to him that he had not yet read it through to the end, and he took it out again over the coffee and perused the remainder.

"What more does he write?" asked Anna.

"Nothing special," answered George. "About people who probably wouldn't interest you particularly. He seems to have got in again with his café set; more in fact than he likes and clearly more than he owns up to."

"He'll fit in all right," said Anna flippantly.

George smiled reflectively. "It is a funny set anyway."

"And what is the news with them?" asked Anna.

George had put the letter down by the cup and now looked at it. "Little Winternitz ... you know ... the fellow who once recited his poems to me and Heinrich last winter ... is going to Berlin as reader to a newly-founded theatre. And Gleissner, the man who stared at us once so in the museum...."

"Oh yes, that abominable fellow with the eyeglass."

"Well, he declares that he is going to give up writing to devote himself exclusively to sport...."

"To sport?"

"Yes, quite a sport of his own. He plays with human souls."

"What?"

"Just listen." He read:

"This buffoon is now asserting that he is simultaneously engaged in the solution of the two following psychological problems, which supplement each other in quite an ingenious way. The first is to bring a young and innocent creature to the lowest depth of depravity, while the second is to make a prostitute into a saint, as he puts it. He promises that he will not rest until the first one finishes up in a brothel, and the second one in a cloister."

"A nice lot," remarked Anna and got up from the table.

"How the sound carries over here," said George and followed her into the grounds.

A dark-blue day, heavy with the sun, was resting on the tops of the trees. They stood for a while by the low balustrade which separated the garden from the street and looked over the lake to the mountains looming behind silver-grey veils that fluttered in the sunlight. They then walked deeper into the grounds, where the shade was cooler and darker, and as they walked arm-in-arm over the softly-crunching gravel along the high brown ivy-grown walls, and looked in at the old houses with their narrow windows, they chatted about the news that had arrived that day, and for the first time a slight anxiety rose up in their minds at the thought that they would so soon have to leave the friendly secrecy of foreign lands for home, where even the ordinary stereotyped day seemed full of hidden dangers. They sat down beneath the plane-tree at the white lacquered table. This place had always been kept free for them, as though it had been reserved. The newly-arrived Austrian gentleman, however, had sat there yesterday afternoon, but driven away by a disapproving glance of Anna's had gone away after a polite salutation.

George hurried up to his room and fetched a few books for Anna and a volume of Goethe's poems and the manuscript of his quintette for himself. They both sat there, read, worked, looked up at times, smiled at each other, exchanged a few words, peered again into their books, looked over the balustrade into the open, and felt peace in their souls and summer in the air. They heard the fountain plashing quite near them behind the bushes, while a few drops fell upon the surface of the water. Frequently the wheels of a carriage would crunch along on the other side of the high wall, at times faint distant whistles would sound from the lake, and less frequently human voices would ring into the garden from the road along the bank. The day, drunken to the full with sunlight, lay heavy on the tree-tops. Later on the noise and the voices increased in volume and number with the gentle wind which was wafted from the lake every afternoon. The beat of the waves on the shore was more audible. The cries of the boatman resounded: on the other side of the wall there rang out the singing of young people. Tiny drops from the fountain were sprinkled around. The breath of approaching evening woke once more human beings, land and water.

Steps were heard on the gravel. Therese, still in white, came quickly through the avenue. George got up, went a few steps to meet her and shook hands. Anna wanted to get up, too, but Therese would not allow it, embraced her, gave her a kiss on the cheek and sat down by her side. "How beautiful it is here!" she exclaimed; "but haven't I come too early?"

"What an idea! I'm really awfully glad," replied Anna.

Therese considered her with a scrutinising smile and took hold of both her hands. "Well, your appearance is reassuring," she said.

"I am very well, as a matter of fact," replied Anna, "and you look as if you were too," she joked good-humouredly.

George's eyes rested on Therese, who was again dressed in white, as she had been in the morning, though now more smartly in English embroidered linen, with a string of light pink corals round her bare throat.

While the two women were discussing the strange coincidence of their meeting George got up to give the orders for dinner. When he returned to the garden the two others were no longer there. He saw Therese on the balcony with her back leaning against the railing, talking with Anna, who was invisible and was presumably in the depths of the room. He felt in good form and walked up and down the avenue, allowed melodies to sing themselves within him, was conscious of his youth and happiness, threw an occasional glance up to the balcony or towards the street, beyond the balustrade, and at last saw Demeter Stanzides arriving. He went to meet him. "Glad to see you," he cried out in welcome from the garden gate. "The ladies are upstairs in the room but will be turning up soon. Would you like to have a look at the grounds in the meanwhile?"

"Delighted."

They went on walking together.

"Do you intend to stay much longer in Lugano?" asked George.

"No, we go to-morrow to Bellaggio, from there to Lake Maggiore, Isola Bella. A really good time never lasts. We have got to be home again in a fortnight."

"Such short leave?"

"Oh, it is not on my account, but Therese has got to go back. I am quite a free man. I have already sent in my papers."

"So you seriously mean to retire to your estate?"

"My estate?"

"Yes, I heard something to that effect at Ehrenbergs'."

"But I haven't got the estate yet, you see. It is simply in the stage of negotiations."

"And where are you going to buy one? if it is not a rude question."

"Where the foxes say good-night to each other. The last place you would think of. On the Hungarian-Croatian frontier, very lonely and remote but very remarkable. I have a certain sympathy for the district. Youthful memories. I spent three years there as a lieutenant. Of course I think I shall grow young again there. Well, who knows?"

"A fine property?"

"Not bad. I saw it again two months ago. I knew it of course in the old days, it then belonged to Count Jaczewicz, finally to a manufacturer. Then his wife died. He now feels lonely down there and wants to get rid of it."

"I don't know," said George, "but I imagine the neighbourhood a little melancholy."

"Melancholy! Well, it seems to me that at a certain period of one's life every neighbourhood acquires a melancholy appearance." And he looked round the balcony, as though to evolve from his surroundings a new proof of the truth of his words.

"At what period?"

"Well, when one begins to get old."

George smiled. Demeter struck him as so handsome and as still young in spite of the grey hairs on his temple. "How old are you then, Herr Stanzides? if it isn't a rude question."

"Thirty-seven. I don't say I am old, but I am getting old. Men usually begin to talk about getting old when they have been old for a long time."

They sat down on the seat at the end of the garden, just where it runs into the wall. They had a view of the hotel and of the great terrace on the garden. The upper storeys with their verandahs were hidden from them by the foliage of the trees. George offered Demeter a cigarette and took one himself. And both were silent for a while.

"I heard that you, too, are leaving Vienna," said Demeter.

"Yes, that's very probable ... if of course I get a job in some opera. Well, even if it isn't this year it is bound to be next."

Demeter sat with legs crossed over each other, gripped one of them tightly by the knee, and nodded. "Yes, yes," he said, and blew the smoke slowly through his lips in driblets. "It is really a fine thing to have a talent. In that case one is bound to feel a bit different sometimes, even about beginning to grow old. That is really the one thing I could envy a man for."

"You have no reason to at all. Anyway, people with talent are not really to be envied. At any rate, only people with genius. And I envy them probably even more than you do. But I think that talents like yours are something much more definite, something much sounder so to speak. Of course one doesn't always happen to be in form.... But at any rate, one always achieves something quite respectable if one can do anything at all, while people in my line, if they are not in form are no better than old age pensioners."

Demeter laughed. "Yes, but an artistic talent like yours lasts longer and develops more and more as the years go on. Take Beethoven, for instance. The Ninth Symphony is really the finest thing he did. Don't you think so. And what about the second part of Faust?... While we are bound to go back as the years go on—we can't help it—even the Beethovens amongst us. And how early it begins, apart from quite rare exceptions! I was at my prime for instance at twenty-five. I've never done again what I had in me at twenty-five. Yes, my dear Baron, those were times."

"Come, I remember seeing you win a race two years ago against Buzgo, who was the favourite then.... Why, I even betted on him...."

"My dear Baron," interrupted Stanzides, "you take it from me, I know the reason why I left off improving. One can feel a thing like that oneself. And that's why no one knows so well as the sportsman when he's beginning to grow old. And then no further training is any good. The whole thing then becomes purely artificial. And if any one tells you that that's not the case, then he's simply ... but here come the ladies."

They both got up. Therese and Anna were approaching arm-in-arm, one all in white, the other in a black dress, which falling to the ground in wide folds completely hid her figure. The couples met by the fountain.

Demeter kissed Anna's hand. "What a beautiful spot I have the good fortune to see you again in, my dear lady."

"It is a pleasant surprise to me, too," replied Anna, "quite apart from the scenery."

"Do you know," said George to Anna, "that these good people are travelling off again to-morrow?"

"Yes, Therese has told me."

"We want to see as much as possible," explained Demeter, "and so far as my recollection goes the other lakes in upper Italy are even more magnificent than the one here."

"I don't know anything about the others," said Anna. "We haven't done them yet."

"Well, perhaps you will take the opportunity," said Demeter, "and make up a party with us for a little tour: Bellaggio, Pallanza, Isola Bella."

Anna shook her head. "It would be very nice but unfortunately I can't get about enough. Yes, I am incredibly lazy. There are whole days when I never go out of the grounds. But if George fancies running away from me for a day or two, I don't mind at all."

"I have no intention at all of running away from you," said George. He threw a quick glance at Therese, whose eyes were sparkling and laughing.

They all strolled slowly through the garden while it gradually became dusk, and chatted about the places they had recently seen. When they came back to the table under the plane-tree it was laid for dinner and the fairy-lights were burning in the glass holders. The waiter was just bringing the Asti in a bucket. Anna sat down on the seat, which had the trunk of the plane-tree for its back. Therese sat opposite her and George and Demeter on either side.

The meal was served and the wine poured out. George inquired after their Viennese acquaintances. Demeter told them that Willy Eissler had brought back from his trip some brilliant caricatures both of hunters and of beasts. Old Ehrenberg had bought the pictures.

"Do you know about the Oskar affair yet?" said George.

"What affair?"

"Oh, the affair with his father in front of St. Michael's Church." He remembered that he had thought of telling Demeter the story some time back before the ladies had appeared, but that he had thought it right to suppress it. It was the wine, no doubt, which now loosened his tongue against his will. He told them briefly what Heinrich had written him.

"But this is an extremely sad business," said Demeter, very much moved, and all the others immediately felt more serious.

"Why is it a sad business?" asked Therese. "I think it is enough to make one laugh till one cried."

"My dear Therese, you don't consider the consequences it may have for the young man."

"Good gracious, I know well enough. It will make him impossible in a certain set, but that won't do more than make him realise what a silly ass he has been up to the present."

"Well," said George, "if Oskar really is one of those people who can be made to realise anything.... But I really don't think so."

"Apart from the fact, my dear Therese," added Demeter, "that what you call realising doesn't necessarily mean seeing things in their proper light. All sets of people have their prejudices. Even you are not free from them."

"And what prejudices have we got, I should like to know?" cried Therese, and emptied her glass of wine angrily. "We only want to clear away certain prejudices, particularly the prejudice that there is this privileged caste who regard it as a special honour...."

"Excuse, me, Therese dear, but you are not at a meeting now, and I am afraid that the applause at the conclusion of your speech will turn out much fainter than you are accustomed to."

"Look here," Therese turned to Anna, "this is how a cavalry officer argues."

"I beg your pardon," said George, "the whole business has scarcely anything at all to do with prejudices. A box on the ears in the public street, even though it is from one's own father.... I don't think one has got to be an officer in the reserve or a student."

"That box on the ears," cried Therese, "gives me a real sense of relief. It represents the well-merited conclusion of a ridiculous and superfluous existence."

"Conclusion! We hope it's not that," said Demeter.

"My letter says," replied George, "that Oskar has travelled off, no one knows where."

"If I am sorry for any one in the business," said Therese, "it is certainly for the old man, who, good-hearted fellow that he is, is probably regretting this very day the unpleasant position in which he has placed his beastly snob of a son."

"Good-hearted!" exclaimed Demeter. "A millionaire! A factory owner!... My dear Therese...!"

"Yes, it does happen sometimes. He happens to be one of those people who are at one with us at the bottom of their soul. You remember the evening, Demeter, when you had the pleasure of seeing me for the first time. Do you know why I was at Ehrenbergs' then?... And do you know the object for which he gave me straight away a thousand gulden...? To...." She bit her lips. "I mustn't say, that was the condition."

Suddenly Demeter got up and bowed to somebody who had just passed. It was the Austrian gentleman who had arrived yesterday. He lifted his hat and vanished in the darkness of the garden.

"Do you know that man?" asked George, after a few seconds. "I also seem to know him, but who is it?"

"The Prince of Guastalla," said Demeter.

"Really!" exclaimed Therese involuntarily, and her eyes pierced into the darkness.

"What are you looking at him for?" said Demeter. "He is just a man like any one else."

"He is supposed to be banished from Court," said George, "isn't he?"

"I know nothing about that," replied Demeter, "but he is certainly not a favourite there. He recently published a pamphlet about certain conditions in our army, particularly the life of the officers in the provinces. It went very much against him, although as a matter of fact there is nothing really bad in it."

"He should have applied to me about that," said Therese. "I could have given him a tip or two."

"My dear child," said Demeter deprecatingly, "what you are probably referring to again is simply an exceptional case. You shouldn't jump at once into generalities."

"I am not generalising, but a case like that is sufficient to damn the whole...."

"Don't make a speech, Therese...."

"I am speaking about Leo." Therese turned to George. "It is really awful what he has been going through this year."

George suddenly remembered that Therese was Leo's sister, as though it were a most remarkable thing which he had completely forgotten. Did he know that she was here and whom she was with?

Demeter bit his lips somewhat nervously.

"There is an Anti-Semitic First-Lieutenant, you know," said Therese, "who rags him in a particularly mean way because he knows how Leo despises him."

George nodded. He knew all about it.

"My dear child," said Demeter, "I can't make it out, as I have already told you several times. I happen to know First-Lieutenant Sefranek, and I assure you it is possible to get on with him. He is not particularly clever, and it may be quite right to say that he has got no particular liking for the Israelites, but after all one must admit that there are a lot of so-called opprobrious Anti-Semitic expressions which really have no significance at all, and which, so far as my experience goes, are used by Jews quite as much as by Christians. And your worthy brother certainly suffers from a morbid sensitiveness."

"Sensitiveness is never morbid," retorted Therese. "It is only lack of sensitiveness which is a disease, and the most loathsome one I know as a matter of fact. It is notorious that I am as far apart as possible from my brother in my political views. You know that best of all, George. I hate Jewish bankers quite as much as feudal landed proprietors, and orthodox Rabbis quite as much as Catholic priests; but if a man feels himself superior to me because he belongs to another creed or another race than I do, and being conscious of his greater power makes me feel that superiority, I would.... Well, I don't know what I would do to a man like that. But anyway I should quite understand Leo if he were to take the next opportunity of going tooth-and-nail for Herr Sefranek."

"My dear child," said Demeter, "if you have the slightest influence with your brother you should try and stop this tooth-and-nail business at any price. In my view by far the best thing to do in a case like that is to go about things in the respectable, I mean the regulation way. It is really not at all true that that never does any good. The superior officers are mostly quiet people, at any rate they are correct and...."

"But Leo did that long ago ... as far back as February. He went to the Major, the Major was very nice to him, and as appears from many indications gave the First-Lieutenant a good talking to; the only thing is it unfortunately wasn't the slightest use. On the contrary, the next chance he had the First-Lieutenant made a special point of starting his beastly tricks again, and he is continuing them with the most refined malice. I assure you, Baron, I am afraid every single day that some misfortune will happen."

Demeter shook his head. "We live in a mad age. I assure you"—he turned to George—"First-Lieutenant Sefranek is no more of an Anti-Semite than you or I. He visits at Jewish houses. I even know that he was extremely intimate for years with a Jewish regimental doctor. It really seems as though everybody were going mad."

"You may be right in that," said Therese.

"Oh, well, Leo is so reasonable," said George. "He is so sensible in spite of all his temperament that I am convinced that he won't let himself be swept away by any foolish impulse. After all he must know that it will all be over in a few months; one can manage to put up with it for that time."

"Do you know, by-the-by, Baron," said Therese, while following the example of the men she took a cigarette out of a box which the waiter had brought, "do you know that Leo was quite charmed with your compositions?"

"What, charmed?" said George, while he gave Therese a light. "I really hadn't noticed it at all."

"Well, he liked some things," qualified Therese, "and that's practically the same as somebody else being delighted with them."

"Have you composed anything on your trip?" asked Demeter courteously.

"Only a few songs."

"I suppose we shall hear them in the autumn?" said Demeter.

"Good gracious, don't let's talk about the autumn," said Therese. "We may be dead or in prison before then."

"Well, if one really wants to one can manage to avoid the latter alternative," exclaimed Demeter.

Therese shrugged her shoulders. George was sitting near her and believed he could feel the warmth of her body. Lights were shining from the hotel windows and a long reddish strip reached the table at which the two couples were sitting.

"I suggest," said George, "that we make the best of the fine evening and go for another walk along the shore."

"Or take a boat," exclaimed Therese.

They all agreed. George ran up to the room to fetch wraps. When he came down again he found the others standing by the door of the grounds ready to start. He helped Anna into her light-grey cloak, hung his own long overcoat over Therese's shoulders and kept a dark-green rug over his arm. They went slowly through the avenue to the place where the boats were moored. Two boatmen took the party with quick strokes of their oars out of the darkness of the shore into the black shining water. The mountains towered up to the sky, monstrous and gigantic. The stars were not very numerous. Tiny bluish-grey clouds hung in the air. The rowers sat on two cross benches; in the middle of the boat on narrow seats the two couples sat opposite each other: George and Anna, Demeter and Therese. All were quite silent at first, it was only after some minutes that George broke the silence. He told them the name of the mountain which separated the lake from the South, drew their attention to a village, which though it seemed infinitely far away as it nestled up to the slope of a cliff could nevertheless be reached in a quarter of an hour; he recognised the white shining house on the height above Lugano as the hotel in which Demeter and Therese were staying and told them about a walk far into the country between sunny vineyards which he had taken the other day.

While he spoke Anna kept hold of his hand underneath the rug. Demeter and Therese sat next to each other staidly and correctly, and not at all like lovers who had only found each other a short time ago. It was only now that George gradually recovered his fancy for Therese, which had almost vanished during her loud violent speechifying.

How long will this Demeter affair last? he thought. Will it be over when the autumn comes or will it after all last as long or longer than my affair with Anna? Will this row on the dark lake be some time in the future just a memory of something that has completely vanished, just like my row on the Veldeser Lake with that peasant girl, which now comes into my mind again for the first time for years?... Or like my voyage with Grace across the sea? How strange! Anna is holding my hand, I am pressing it, and who knows if she isn't feeling at this very minute something similar with regard to Demeter to what I am feeling about Therese? No, I am sure not.... She carries a child under her heart which has already quickened.... That's why.... Hang it all!... Why, it's my child as well.... Our child is now going for a row on the lake of Lugano.... Shall I tell it one day that it went for a row round the lake of Lugano before it was born? How will it all turn out? We shall be back in Vienna again in a few days. Does Vienna really exist? It will only slowly begin to come into existence again as we train back.... Yes, that's how it is.... As soon as I'm home work will start seriously. I shall remain quietly at my home in Vienna and just visit Anna from time to time; I won't live with her in the country.... Or at all events only just before ... and the autumn.... Shall I be in Detmold? And where will Anna be? And the child?... With strangers somewhere in the country. How improbable the whole thing seems!... But it was also very improbable a year ago to-day that I and Stanzides should go for a row on the lake of Lugano with Fräulein Anna Rosner and Fräulein Therese Golowski respectively. And now the whole thing couldn't be more of a matter of course.... He suddenly heard with abnormal clearness, as though he had just woken up, Demeter's voice quite near him.

"When does our boat leave to-morrow?"

"Nine o'clock in the morning," replied Therese.

"She maps out the plan of campaign you know," said Demeter. "I don't need to bother about anything."

The moon suddenly shone out over the lake.

It seemed as though it had waited behind the mountains and were now coming out to say goodbye. That infinitely distant village by the mountain-slope suddenly lay quite close in all its whiteness. The boat beached. Therese got up. She was shrouded in the night and looked strikingly tall. George sprang out of the boat and helped her to disembark. He felt her cool fingers, which did not tremble, in his hand, but moved softly as though on purpose, and caught the breath from her lips quite close. Demeter got out after her, then came Anna, tired and awkward. The boatman thanked them for their generous tip and both couples started to walk homewards. The Prince was sitting on a seat in a long dark cloak in the avenue along the bank. He was smoking a cigar, seemed to be looking out on to the nocturnal lake and turned away his head with the obvious intention of avoiding being saluted.

"A man like that could tell a tale," said Therese to George, with whom she had fallen further and further behind, while Demeter and Anna went on in front of them.

"So you are going back to Vienna as soon as all that?" asked George.

"A fortnight. Do you think that so soon? At any rate you will be home before us, won't you?"

"Yes, we shall leave in a few days. We can't put it off any longer. Besides, we shall have to break the journey a few times. Anna doesn't stand travelling well."

"Do you know yet that I found the villa for Anna just before I left?" said Therese.

"Really, you? Did you go looking, too?"

"Yes, I went into the country a few times with my mother. It is a small fairly old house in Salmansdorf with a beautiful garden, which leads straight out to the fields and forest, and the bit of ground in front of the house is quite overgrown.... Anna will tell you more about it. I believe it is the last house in the place. Then there comes an inn, but a fair distance away from it."

"I must have overlooked that house on my house-hunting expeditions in the spring."

"Clearly, or you would have taken it. There is a little clay figure standing on a lawn near the garden hedge."

"Can't remember. But do you know, Therese, it is really nice of you to have taken all this trouble for us, as well as your mother. More than nice." He thought of adding "when one takes your strenuous life into consideration," but suppressed it.

"Why are you surprised?" asked Therese. "I am very fond of Anna."

"Do you know what I once heard some one say about you?" replied George after a short pause.

"Well, what?"

"That you would either finish up on the scaffold or as a princess."

"That's a phrase of Doctor Berthold Stauber. He once told it me himself, you know. He is very proud of it, but it is sheer nonsense."

"The betting at present is certainly more on the princess."

"Who says so? The princess dream will soon be over!"

"Dream?"

"Yes, I am just beginning to wake up. It is rather like the morning air streaming into a bedroom."

"And then I suppose the other dream will begin?"

"What do you mean, the other dream?"

"This is what I take to be the case with you. When you are in the public eye again, making speeches, sacrificing yourself for some cause or other, then at some moment or other the whole thing strikes you like a dream, doesn't it? And you think real life is somewhere else."

"There is really something in what you say."

At this moment Demeter and Anna, who were standing by the garden gate, turned round towards them both and immediately took the broad avenue towards the entrance of the hotel. George and Therese also went on further, unseen outside the railing, into the darkest depths of the shade.

George suddenly seized hold of his companion's hand. As though astonished she turned towards him and both now stood opposite each other, enveloped by the darkness and closer than they could understand. They did not know how ... they scarcely meant to, but their lips rested on each other for a short moment that was more charged with the doleful joy of deception than with any other emotion. They then went on, silent, unsatisfied, desirous, and stepped through the garden door.

The two others, who were in front of the hotel, now turned round and came to meet them.

Therese quickly said to George: "Of course you don't come with us?"

George nodded slightly. They were now all standing in the broad quiet light of the arc-lamps.

"It was really a beautiful evening," said Demeter, kissing Anna's hand.

"Goodbye then till Vienna," said Therese and embraced Anna.

Demeter turned to George. "I hope we shall see each other to-morrow morning on the boat."

"Possibly, but I won't promise."

"Goodbye," said Therese and shook hands with George.

She and Demeter then turned round to go away.

"Are you going with them?" asked Anna, as they went through the door into the lounge, where men and women were sitting, smoking, drinking, talking.

"What an idea?" replied George. "I never thought of it."

"Herr Baron," suddenly called some one behind him. It was the porter, who held a telegram in his hand.

"What is this?" asked George, somewhat alarmed, opening it quickly. "Oh, how awful!" he exclaimed.

"What is it?" asked Anna.

He read it out while she looked at the piece of paper. "Oskar Ehrenberg tried to commit suicide early this morning in the forest at Neuhaus. Shot himself in the temples, little hope of saving his life, Heinrich."

Anna shook her head. They went up the stairs in silence and into Anna's room. The balcony door was wide open. George stepped into the open air. A heavy perfume of magnolias and roses streamed in out of the darkness. Not a trace of the lake was visible. The mountains towered up as though they had grown out of the abyss. Anna came up to George. He laid his arm on her shoulder and loved her very much. It was as though the serious event of which he had just had tidings, had compelled him to realise the true significance of his own experiences. He knew once more that there was nothing more important for him in the whole world than the well-being of this beloved woman who was standing with him on the balcony and who was to bear him a child.

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