"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?"