The bell had only vibrated softly--a sound like a terrified breath--but Kate had heard it, although she had fallen asleep in her chair; not firmly, only dozing a little. She jumped up in terror, it sounded shrill in her ears. She rushed to the window. Somebody was leaning against the railing outside. Wolfgang? Yes, yes, it was. But why did he not open the gate and come in? What had happened to him? All at once she felt as though she must call for help--Friedrich! Paul! Paul!--must ring for the maids. Something had happened to him, something must have happened to him--why did he not come in? He leant so heavily against the railing, so strangely. His head hung down on his chest, his hat was at the back of his head. Was he ill? Or had some vagrants attacked him? The strangest ideas shot suddenly through her head. Was he wounded? O God, what had happened to him? Fears, at which she would have laughed at any other time, filled her mind in this hour, in which it was not night any longer and not day either. Her feet were cold and stiff as though frozen, she could hardly get to the door; she could not find the key at first, and when her trembling hands stuck it into the lock, she could not turn it. She was so awkward in her haste, so beside herself in her fear. Something terrible must have happened. An accident. She felt it. At last, at last! At last she was able to turn the key. And now she rushed through the front garden to the gate; a chilling icy wind like the breath of winter met her. She opened the gate: "Wolfgang!" He did not answer. She could not quite see his face; he stood there without moving. She took hold of his hand: "Good gracious, what's the matter with you?" He did not move. "Wolfgang! Wolfgang!" She shook him in the greatest terror. Then he fell against her so heavily that he almost knocked her down, and faltered, lisped like an idiot whose heavy tongue has been taught to say a few words: "Beg--par--don." She had to lead him. His breath, which smelt strongly of spirits, blew across her face. A great disgust, more terrible than the fear she had had before, took possession of her. This was the awful thing she had been expecting no, this was still more awful, more intolerable. He was drunk, drunk! This was what a drunken man must look like. A drunken man had never been near her before; now she had one close to her. The horror she felt shook her so that her teeth chattered. Oh for shame, for shame, how disgusting, how vulgar! How degraded he seemed to her, and she felt degraded, too, through him. This was not her Wolfgang any more, the child whom she had adopted as her son. This was quite an ordinary, quite a common man from the street, with whom she had nothing, nothing whatever to do any more.