The others, smiling in spite of themselves, followed him with their eyes. Then Leo suddenly turned to George and asked: "And how is his sister getting on with her singing?" "What?" said George, startled and blushing slightly. "Therese has been telling me," went on Leo quietly, "that you and Anna do music together sometimes. Is her voice all right now?" "Yes," replied George, hesitating, "I believe so; at any rate I think it is very pleasant, very melodious, especially in the deeper registers. It is a pity in my view that it is not big enough for larger rooms." "Not big enough?" repeated Leo meditatively. "How would you describe it?" Leo shrugged his shoulders and looked quietly at George. "It is like this," he said. "I personally like the voice very much, but even when Anna had the idea of going on the stage ... to speak quite frankly, I never thought anything would come of it." "You probably knew," replied George with deliberate casualness, "that Fräulein Anna suffers from a peculiar weakness of the vocal chords." "Yes, of course I knew that, but if she were cut out for an artistic career, really had it in her, I mean, she would certainly have overcome that weakness." "You think so?" "Yes, I do. That is my decided opinion. That's why I think that expressions like 'peculiar weakness' or 'her voice is not big enough' are more or less euphemisms for something more fundamental, more psychological. It's quite clear that her fate line says nothing about her being an artist, that's a fact. She was, so to speak, predestined from the beginning to end her days in respectable domesticity." Heinrich enthusiastically caught up the theory of the fate line, and led their thoughts in his own erratic way from the sphere of cleverness to the sphere of sophistry, and from the sphere of sophistry to the sphere of the nonsensical. He then suggested that they should bask for half an hour in the meadow in the sun. "It will probably not shine so warm again during this year." The others agreed. A hundred yards from the inn George and Leo stretched themselves out on their cloaks. Heinrich sat down on the grass, crossed his arms over his knees, and looked in front of him. At his feet the sward sloped down to the forest. Still deeper down rested the villas of Neuwaldegg, buried in loose foliage. The spire-crosses and dazzling windows of the town shone out from the bluish-grey clouds, and far away, as though lifted up by a moving haze, the plain swept away to a gradual darkness. Pedestrians were walking over the fields towards the inn. Some gave them a greeting as they passed, and one of them, a slim young man who led a child by the hand, remarked to Heinrich: "This is a really fine day, just like May."