She sipped the hot coffee, whose fragrance flew around them like bees murmuring around flowers, in the snowy air, she drank tiny sips of the Heidelbeerwasser, she ate the cold, sweet, creamy wafers. How good everything was! How perfect everything tasted and smelled and sounded, here in this utter stillness of snow and falling twilight.
“You are going away tomorrow?” his voice came at last.
“Yes.”
There was a pause, when the evening seemed to rise in its silent, ringing pallor infinitely high, to the infinite which was near at hand.
“Wohin?”
That was the question—wohin? Whither? Wohin? What a lovely word! She never wanted it answered. Let it chime for ever.
“I don’t know,” she said, smiling at him.
He caught the smile from her.
“One never does,” he said.
“One never does,” she repeated.