She shuddered.
"Soon it will have us in its clutches at any rate. Why should we doubt and hesitate? It's all the same whatever we do. In the background stands Nothing. So let us be happy as long as there is still intoxication in life."
The clock struck twelve.
Each stroke was like the flapping of wings of some lonely straying soul.
With a sob she fell on his breast.
At the same time a year later Hedwig was sitting in the same room--but alone. He had meant to be there by Christmas, but then had postponed his coming until New Year, and by New Year's eve he had not yet arrived. Instead a letter had come. She had been reading it over and over again for hours.
She had aged greatly and bore the marks of intense suffering. A hard bitter smile hovered about her lips. Her cheeks were aflame with the fires of death, while she stared at the phrases in the letter, forced hollow phrases of tenderness, forced because he was embarrassed.
She sank down in front of the settee on the same spot on which he had kneeled a year before, a woman tortured and humbled to death; and hiding her face in the cushions, she murmured:
"One more!"