When she saw that Gertrude knit her brow at this exclamation, she wheeled about on the heels of her clumsy shoes, and screamed as if the devil were after her: “Oi, oi, Gertrude, Gertrude, oi, oi, the meat’s burning! The meat’s burning.”
It was a false alarm. The meat was sizzling quite peacefully in the pan.
IX
Late in the afternoon of a stormy day in June Daniel came home from the last rehearsal of the “Harzreise,” tired and out of humour. The rehearsals had been held in a small room in Weyrauth’s Garden. He had quarrelled with all the musicians and with all the singers, male and female.
As he reached Ægydius Place a shudder suddenly ran through his body. He was forced to cover his eyes with his hands and stand still for a moment; he thought he would die from longing for a precious virginal possession which he had been so foolish as to trifle away.
He went up the steps, passed by his own apartment, and climbed on up to the apartment of Inspector Jordan and his daughter Eleanore.
His eye fell on the board partition surrounding the stove and the copper cooking utensils that hung on the wall. There sat Eleanore, her arm resting on the window sill, her head on her hand: she was meditating—meditating and gaining new strength as she did so. Her face was turned toward the steep fall of a roof, the century-old frame-work, grey walls, darkened window panes and dilapidated wooden galleries, above which lay stillness and a rectangular patch of sky that was then covered with clouds.
“Good evening,” said Daniel, as he stepped out of the darkness into the dimly lighted room. “What are you doing, Eleanore, what are you thinking about?”
Eleanore shuddered: “Ah, is it you, Daniel? You show yourself after a long while? And ask what I am thinking about? What curiosity! Do you want to come into my room?”