While George was speaking to Frau Ehrenberg he noticed that Else, who had retired with James into the recess, was directing glances towards him--glances full of melancholy and of knowledge, which almost frightened him. He soon took his leave, had a feeling that Else's handshake was inconceivably cold, while those of the others were amiably indifferent, and went. "How funny it all is," he thought in the vehicle which drove him to Heinrich's. People knew everything before he did. They had known of his _liaison_ with Anna before it had begun, and now they knew that it was over before he did himself. He had half a mind to show them all that they were making a mistake. Of course, in so vital an affair as that one should be very careful not to decide on one's course of action out of considerations of pique. It was a good thing that a few months were now before him in which he could pull himself together and have time for mature reflection. It would be good for Anna, too, particularly good for her, perhaps. Yesterday's walk with her in the rain over the brown wet streets came into his mind again, and struck him as ineffably sad. Alas, for the hours in the arched room into which the strains of the organ opposite had vibrated through the floating curtain of snow--where were they? Yes, where had these hours gone to? And so many other wonderful hours as well! He saw himself and Anna again in his mind's eye, as a young couple on their honeymoon, walking through streets which had the wonderful atmosphere of a strange land; commonplace hotel rooms, where he had only stayed with her for a few days, suddenly presented themselves before him, consecrated as it were by the perfume of memory.... Then his love appeared to him, sitting on a white seat, beneath the heavy branches, with her high forehead girdled with the deceptive presentiment of gentle motherhood. And finally she stood there with a sheet of music in her hand while the white curtain fluttered gently in the wind. And when he realised that it was the same room in which she was now waiting for him, and that not more than a year had gone by since that evening hour in the late summer when she had sung his own songs for the first time to his own accompaniment, he breathed heavily and almost anxiously in his corner. When he was in Heinrich's room a few minutes afterwards he asked him not to look upon this as a visit. He only wanted to shake hands with him. He would fetch him for a walk to-morrow morning if that suited him.... Yes--the idea occurred to him while he was speaking--for a kind of farewell walk in the Salmansdorf Forest. Heinrich agreed, but asked him to stay just a few minutes. George asked him jestingly if he had already recovered from his failure of this morning.