But suddenly the image represented the Cadenabbia cemetery. George was sitting like a little boy on the stone wall which surrounded it, and suddenly turned his gaze down towards the lake. And then there rode in a very long narrow boat, beneath dull yellow sails, with a green shawl on her shoulders, a woman, sitting motionless on the rowing bench, a woman whose face he tried to recognise with vague and almost painful efforts. The bell rang. George got up. What was it? Oh, of course, there was no one there to open. The servant had been discharged since the first day of the month, and the porter's wife, who now looked after the brothers, was not in the apartment at this hour. George went into the hall and opened the door. Heinrich Bermann was standing in the hall. "I saw a light in your room from down below," he said. "It was a good idea my first going past your house. I was going, as a matter of fact, to drive out to your place in the country." Is his manner really so excited? thought George, or do I only think it is? He asked him to come in and sit down. "Thanks, thanks, I prefer to walk up and down. No, don't light the high lamp. The table lamp's quite enough.... Anyway--how are you getting on out there?" "A child was born this morning," replied George quietly. "But unfortunately it was dead." "Still-born?" "I don't know if one can say that," replied George with a bitter smile; "for it is supposed to have drawn one breath according to the doctor. The pains lasted for three days on end. It was ghastly. Now it's all over." "Dead! I'm very sorry--I really am." He held out his hand to George. "It was a boy," said George, "and strangely enough, very beautiful. Quite different from what new-born children usually look like." He then told him, too, how he had stayed quite a time in an inhospitable summer-house which he had never gone into before, and the strange way in which the lighting of the country had suddenly altered. "It was a light," said George, "that places in one's dreams sometimes have. Quite indefinite ... like twilight ... but rather mournful." While he said this, he knew that he would have described the whole matter quite differently to Felician. Heinrich sat in the corner of the ottoman and let the other speak. He then began: "It is strange. All this affects me very much, of course, and yet ... it calms me at the same time." "Calms you?" "Yes. As though certain things which I unhappily had to fear had suddenly grown less probable." "What kind of things?" Without listening to him Heinrich went on speaking with set teeth. "Or is it only because I am in the presence of another man's grief? Or is it because I am somewhere else, in a strange flat? That would be quite possible. Haven't you noticed that even one's own death strikes one as something highly improbable, when one is travelling for instance; frequently in fact when one is out for a walk. Man is subject to incomprehensible illusions like that."