They spread him beside the Jurist in the moonlight—with a certain effect of symmetry.
Geiger-Hans locked the door on the outside and pocketed the key. A second, then he and Steven stood together in the darkness of the landing. Except for the snores from within the room and for similar sounds rising from the kitchen below, the inn of The Three Ways was wrapped in stillness.
Outside, the gale, which had long been waning, had now fallen.
"That is the courier, I take it," said the wanderer. "Did I not say, my noble friend, that I would bring you into the company of heroes? Listen to them! Thus do we conspire in Westphalia!"
When they re-entered the room, the musician went instantly to the window and, opening it wide, stood inhaling in deep draughts the clean airs of the woods. It was that most silent, most mysterious hour of the whole circle—the hour before dawn. More silent and more mysterious, this night, it seemed because of the storm that had passed. Nature was exhausted after her passion, merely shaken by a faint reminiscent sigh that came stealing with scarce the quiver of a leaf, as from a tired heart.
The night sky held a strange depth of blue against the garish yellow lamplight within; the stars were paling. With head, thrown back, the wanderer stood gazing upwards. There were moods of his strange comrade that Steven had learned to respect. He therefore neither spoke nor approached; but, after completing the purification of the room by the simple process of turning out all the cans and bottles, he sat down and waited, absorbed in his own painful reflections. At last Geiger-Hans drew a deep breath, and, leaving the window open, sat down facing his companion. The contents of the rifled mail-bag lay between them.
The musician's face looked pale and severe. Still in silence, he began to toss such packets as had escaped violation back into the bag.
"Will you give me my letter, please?" said Steven, dully. Then his youth and hot blood betrayed him into a cry: "Oh, I am miserable!"
The older man glanced at him from under his eyebrows. It was an odd thing—for what was he, after all, but a poor, half-crazed, broken gentleman? yet there was a certain smile of this Geiger-Hans which made the world seem warm to the rich and highborn Steven.
"O blessed unhappiness of youth!" cried the musician in his old manner, mocking yet passionate. "Did you but know it, these pangs, these sighs, will be sweeter to the memory of your old age than your youth's most satisfied ecstasies! Here is your letter, boy. Go, weep and rage upon it, if you will, with all the fury of your checked aspiration.... What, you open your arms, and she is not ready forthwith to fall into them? You condescend to run after her, and she does not instantly stand still to be caught! You thought that to-morrow's sun would see you with your bride in your embrace, and behold! you have yet to woo her? Bewail your hard fate, you are indeed to be pitied!"