The roar of the streets wrapped itself, as a diver’s helmet, about his ears. He walked on in his stupefaction, as though between thick glass walls. He had no thought apart from the name of his beloved, no consciousness apart from his longing for her. Shivering with weariness, he thought of the girl’s eyes and lips, with a feeling very like homesickness.
Ah!—brow to brow with her—then mouth to mouth—eyes closed—breathing....
Peace.... Peace....
“Come,” said his heart. “Why do you leave me alone?”
He walked along in a stream of people, fighting down the mad desire to stop amid this stream and to ask every single wave, which was a human being, if it knew of Maria’s whereabouts, and why she had let him wait in vain.
He came to the magician’s house. There he stopped.
He stared at a window.
Was he mad?
There was Maria, standing behind the dull panes. Those were her blessed hands, stretched out towards him ... a dumb cry: “Help me—!”
Then the entire vision was drawn away, swallowed up by the blackness of the room behind it, vanishing, not leaving a trace, as though it had never been. Dumb, dead and evil stood the house of the magician there.