He wept aloud, and she wept with him in compassionate sympathy. If only Paul had been there. She could not find any comforting words to say to him, she felt so deserving of blame herself, she believed there was no longer any comfort to be found. Before her eyes stood the _one_ agonising, torturing question: "How is it to end?" engraved in large letters, like the inscriptions over cemetery gates. * * * * * * * * * * * * * Kate took counsel with herself: should she write to her husband "Come"? Wolfgang was certainly not well again. He did not complain, he only said he could not sleep at night and that made him so tired. She did not know whether it was moral suffering that deprived him of his sleep or physical. She was in great trouble, but she still put off the letter to her husband. Why should she make him hasten to them, take that long journey? It would not be of any use. It was still not clear to her that she wanted him for herself, for her own sake. She even omitted writing to him for a few days. Wolfgang lay a great deal on the couch in his room with the shutters closed; he did not even read. She often went in to keep him company--he must not feel lonely--but it seemed almost as though he were just as pleased to be alone. When she looked at him furtively over the top of her book in the semi-obscurity of the room, she could not think he was so ill. It was probably a disinclination to do anything more than anything else--a slackness of will-power that made him so apathetic also physically. If only she could rouse him. She proposed all manner of things, drives along the coast to all the beautifully situated places in the neighbourhood, excursions into the mountains--they were so near the highest summits in the Alps, and it was indescribably beautiful to look down into the fruitful valleys of the _cinque terre_ that were full of vineyards--sails in the gulf, during which the boat carries you so smoothly under the regular strokes of practised boatmen, that you hardly notice the distance from the shore and still are very soon swimming far out on the open sea, on that heavenly clear, blue sea, whose breath liberates the soul. Did he want to fish--there were such exquisite little gaily-coloured fish there, that are so stupid and greedy they grab at every bait--would he not shoot ospreys as well? She positively worried him. But he always gave her an evasive reply; he did not want to. "I'm really too tired to-day."