The clockmaker probably did not hear the child’s voice. He sat in his low chair as if listening for someone’s steps, the steps of one who had passed away. He thought of his tale, of his brother, of Barbara, of himself.
The builder closed the book. He got up.
“Let us go. It is late.”
And the two Ulwings took leave of each other for the winter.
On the bridge over the Danube the sixteen lamps were already alight. Their light dropped at equal distances into the river. The water played for a time with the beams, then left them behind. It continued its way in darkness towards the rock of St. Gellert’s Mount. Only the chill of its big wet mass was perceptible in the night.
The snow began to fall anew. A light flared up here and there in the window of a house near the shore. The sound of horns was audible on the Danube.
On the bridge, Anne suddenly perceived her father. Young Ulwing walked under the lamps with a girl. They were close together. When they saw the builder and the child they separated rapidly and the girl ran in haste to the other side of the bridge.
Christopher Ulwing called his son.
Leaning against the railing, John Hubert waited for them; he was for ever leaning on something. When they reached him, he took hold of the little girl’s free hand as if he wanted to put her between himself and his father.
Anne was afraid. She felt that something was going on in the silence over her head. She drew her shoulders up. The two men did not speak for a long time to each other. They walked with unequal, apparently antagonistic steps and dragged the trembling child between them.