They were crossing the _terrasse_ to the street. His heart beat a slow march. Her image there had become used. The reality, in its lightning correction of this, dug into his mind. There once more the real figure had its separate and foreign life. He was disagreeably struck by a certain air of depression and cheerlessness in the two figures before him. This one thing that should have been pleasant, displeased him. He was angry as though she had been shamming melancholy. They were not talking, the best proof of familiarity. A strange figure occurred to him; he felt like a man, with all organs, bones, tissues complete, but made of cheap perishable stuff, who could only live for a day and then die of use. This image, reality now before him, had drawn out all his energy, like a distinct being nourished by him. The image, intact in his mind, had returned him more or less the vigour spent. Her listlessness seemed a complement of the weakness he now felt. Energy was ebbing away from both. He stared with bloodshot eyes. Then he got up and began walking after her. Soltyk, on hearing steps, turned round; but he made no remark to Anastasya. They crossed the street and got into a passing tram. Otto Kreisler went back to the café. It was like returning to some hall where there had been a banquet to find empty chairs, empty bottles, and disorder. The vacant seats around seemed to have been lately vacated. Then there was the sensation of being left behind. The Café Berne was a solitary and antediluvian place. Everything began to thrust itself upon him—the people, street, insignificant incidents—as though this indifferent life of facts, in the vanishing of the life of the imagination, had now become important, being the only thing left. Common life seemed rushing in and claiming him, and emphasizing his defeat and the new condition thus inaugurated. He went to Lejeune’s for dinner. During the whole day he had been in feverish hurry, constantly seeing time narrowing in upon him. Now he had a sensation of intolerable leisure. The useless ennui of his life presented itself to him for the thousandth time, but now clearly. This fact seemed to have been waiting with irritating calm, as though to say, “As soon as you can give me your attention?—Well, what are you going to do with me?” For he had compromised himself irretrievably. He knew that sooner or later he must marry and settle down with this stony fact, multiply its image. Things had gone too far.