"Early tomorrow at five o'clock. I'm planning to stay away for a month, and hope that by then my mother will have calmed down, so that I'll be able to leave her. Now that it has been irreversibly decided that I shall sever my ties, I'm almost at ease with this violent cure, though it cuts into my life rather deeply. Perhaps, once I'll have broken out of the circles of my enchantress, I'll succeed in shaking off her spell for ever more. But will you believe it, my friend, that the separation makes me shiver, as if I wouldn't be able to survive it?" "If that's so, the best remedy is to part with her right away." "You mean, not to see her again before the journey? What you're asking is inhuman." Andrea seized his hand. "My dear friend," he said with a heartfelt emotion, which at other times he had always been able to control, "I have no right to ask you for even the slightest sacrifice. The feeling of cordial affection, which has brought me together with you from the start, is ample thanks by itself, and I do not dare to ask you for anything in the name of this friendship of mine. But by the image of that noble woman, whose loving words you've just let me read, I implore you: Don't enter the house of the countess any more. More than anything I know of her, what even you don't deny, my premonition is warning you, that it will be your doom, if you don't avoid her in these last hours. Promise it to me, my dearest friend!" He extended his hand to him. But Rosenberg did not take it. "Don't demand an unbreakable promise," he said, gravely shaking his head, "be content with my firm intention to follow your advice. But if the daemon would be stronger than I and would run down everything I've put in his path, then I would have the double grief to have become unfaithful to both me and you. But you don't know what this woman can achieve, when she puts her mind to it." After this, they were silent and cruised for a while, lost in thought, together through the lifeless waters, receding listlessly like a swamp as the gondola's keel ploughed through them. Near the Rialto, Andrea wished to get out. He asked the young man to give his regards to his mother and inscrutably shrugged his shoulders when being asked whether he could still be found in Venice one month from now. They held each others hand for a long time, and when the gondola landed, they parted with a cordial embrace. Once more, the intelligent and trusting face of the young man looked through the hatch of the black canopy and nodded to his friend, who had stopped on the stairs leading down to the water, lost in his thoughts. For both, the farewell felt more painful than they could explain.