"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.