"Yes, what will I say to her?" repeated Heinrich, and bit at his cigar. "I say, I've got a splendid idea. You'll come with me, George. I'll introduce you as a manager, eh? You are travelling through, have got to catch a special train for St. Petersburg at eleven o'clock this very day. You've heard somewhere or other that the young lady is staying in Vienna, and I as an old friend of the family have been kind enough to introduce you." "Do you feel in the mood for comedies like that?" asked George. "Please forgive me, George, it's really not at all necessary. I'll just ask the old woman if she has any news.... What do you say?... How sultry it is to-night!" They drove over the Ring, through the echoing Burghof, through the streets of the town. George felt in a strange state of tension. Supposing the actress were now really sitting quietly at home with her mother? He felt that it would mean a kind of disillusionment for him. And then he felt ashamed of that emotion. Do I look upon the whole thing as simply a distraction? he thought. What happens to other people ... is rarely more than that, Nürnberger would say.... A strange way of distracting oneself in order to forget the death of one's child.... But what is one to do?... I can't alter things. I shall be going away in a few days, thank heaven. The vehicle stopped in front of a house in the neighbourhood of the Praterstern. A train was growling over the viaduct opposite; underneath the avenues of the Prater ran into the darkness. Heinrich dismissed the conveyance. "Thank you very much," he said to George. "Good-bye." "I'll wait for you here." "Will you really? Well, I should be awfully grateful if you would." He disappeared through the door. George walked up and down. In spite of the lateness of the hour it was still fairly lively in the street. The strains of a military band in the Prater carried to the place where he was. A man and a woman went past him; the man carried in his arms a sleeping child, which had slung its hands round its father's neck. George thought of the garden in Grinzinger, of the unwashed little thing which had stretched out its tiny hands to him from its mother's arms. Had he been really touched then, as Nürnberger had asserted? No, it was certainly not emotion. Something else perhaps. The vague consciousness of standing with both hands linked in that riveted chain which stretches from ancestors to descendants, of participating in the universal human destiny. Now, he stood suddenly released again, alone ... as though spurned by a miracle whose call he had heard without sufficient veneration. It struck ten o'clock from a neighbouring church tower. Only five hours, thought George, and how far away it all seemed! Now he was at liberty to knock about the world as he had done before.... Was he really at liberty?