Mrs. Kraft read the names of the recipients of letters during breakfast. Nothing? Nothing for Philip Massel! He stared savagely towards Mrs. Kraft. She might have read out his name alongside of the fools she had mentioned; he needed his letter a thousand times more than they! He turned resentful eyes towards Mamie. Mamie was chattering sweetly with Mrs. Hannetstein. He stumbled into the garden and sat disconsolately against a trunk. The self-satisfied buzzing of a bee over its tremendously exaggerated labours annoyed him acutely. Minutes passed. His despondency and irritation became more and more unbearably stupid. He had allowed himself to forget her, he had allowed those hungry quiet eyes to slip from his heaven, he had allowed--oh, what a maddeningly fierce scarlet was the geranium in those precise window-boxes! What an insane monotony of triplicate phrases that shallow fat bird sang yonder, the bird with the mottled breast! What a gawky youth was this passing through the front gate with a bumpkin leer and corkscrew feet, a foolish little ochre envelope held stiffly before him! He leaned back against the tree and closed his eyes tiredly. How long would it take before she would really be about? Of course it had been a boast, a joke, that she'd have a monstrous _kuggel_ to greet his return! His head was buzzing foolishly. "Philip Massel! A telegram for you!" Of course that had nothing to do with him! Who the hell was Philip Massel, anyhow? He heard the metallic tinkling of a grasshopper, and saw against his shut eyelids huge yellow spheres like brandy-balls and blue rings and spectral vapours. "Philip Massel! Didn't you hear? A telegram, I said!" The bumpkin was grinning towards him. At the front door Mrs. Kraft stood, arm outstretched. Philip turned a frightened face from youth to woman, from woman to youth. He came forward and opened the envelope. "Mother dangerous return immediately. CHANNAH," he read. A blare of terror sounded in his brain like trumpets. "Mrs. Kraft!" he choked. "My mother's dying! Oh, quick, I've got to go home!" From very far away her voice came. "You must have some hot coffee before you go! The next train's the eleven-twenty!" "You don't know what she's like!" said Philip, burning with a sudden tremendous desire to make this woman understand over whose beloved, intolerably beloved head, lay hideous shadow. "I know!" the woman was saying. "I've been through it all!" She had taken Philip's arm. "Come in now, you can't go off at once! Poor lad, I'm sorry! But then, perhaps, all will turn out well. Jane!" she shouted, "bring some strong coffee in at once!"