At the door Hertha looked round. There he still sat, utterly alone in the vast empty salon, with its illuminated fir-trees and the long white tables, and he was staring after them with an expression of such heartrending and inconsolable wretchedness that Hertha, at the sight of it, felt a cold shiver run through her. It seemed as if she were looking into an abyss of human misery that would swallow her too.
XXXII
On the afternoon of the second Christmas festival, the two friends met again, after a separation of nearly six weeks.
Ulrich, who had arrived home on Christmas Eve, waited a day to see if Leo would turn up; but when he neither came nor sent word, he started off to call on him.
He found him in his study, still arrayed in nightshirt and dressing-gown, reclining on the sofa, enveloped in clouds of smoke.
"What a sluggard you've become," cried Ulrich, with a laugh, but his heart sank at the sight of the waste of so much splendid vigour.
The entrance of his friend gave Leo a slight shock of alarm. But he suppressed it immediately, and rising, hurried to greet him.
Ulrich was aghast at the red, bloated appearance of Leo's face, and the puffiness of his eyes.
"What is the matter with you? Are you ill?" he inquired.
Leo answered, laughing, "It's simply laziness--an attack of laziness, that's all," and he gave his friend's hands a pressure that was nerveless and limp.