When he told the girl, who was listening with much interest, about the Riviera where he was going, something like a new pleasure in life seemed to creep into his heart again. Oh, all he wanted was to get away from his present surroundings. When he got to the Riviera everything would be better. He had not got an exact impression of what it would be like there; he had only half listened, no, he had not listened at all when his mother told him about the south, it had all been so immaterial to him. Now he felt himself that it was a good thing to take an interest in things again. He drew a deep breath. "Are you going to send me a pretty picture post-card from there, too?" she asked. "Of course, many." And then he laid his arm round her narrow shoulders and drew her towards him. And she let him draw her. They stood in the public street, where the bushes that grew on both sides of it were already in bud and the elder was swelling with the first sap, and clung to each other. "Come back quite well," she sobbed. And he kissed her tenderly on her cheek: "Frida, I really have to thank you." When Frida went to business next morning--it was half past seven--she said to her mother: "Now he's gone," and she remained thoughtful the whole day. She had not spoken to Wolfgang for many weeks and she had not minded it at all during the time but since the evening before she had felt sad. She had thought much of him, she could not forget him at all. CHAPTER XVIII Kate was alone with her son. Now she had him all to herself. What she had striven for jealously before had now been given to her. Not even nature that looked in at the windows with such alluring eyes could attract him. It surprised her--nay, it almost saddened her now--that he did not show more interest. They travelled through Switzerland--he saw it for the first time--but those high mountains, whose summits were lost in the snow and the clouds and that moved her to tears of adoring admiration the first time she saw them, hardly wrung a glance from him. Now and then he looked out of the carriage window, but he mostly leant back in his corner reading, or dreaming with open eyes. "Are you tired?" "No," he said; nothing but "no," but without the surly abruptness which had been peculiar to him. His tone was no longer unpleasant and repellent. Kate looked at her son with anxious eyes: was the journey tiring him? It was fortunate that she was with him. It seemed to her that she was indispensable, and a feeling of heartfelt satisfaction made her insensible to the fatigue of the long journey. Wolfgang was not much interested in the cathedral at Milan. "Yes, grand," he said when she grew enthusiastic about the marvellous structure. But he would not go up to the platform with her, from which they would have a magnificent view all round as far as the distant Alps, as the weather was so clear. "You go alone, leave me here."