At the door Hertha looked round. There he still sat, utterly alone in the vast empty salon, with its illuminated fir-trees and the long white tables, and he was staring after them with an expression of such heartrending and inconsolable wretchedness that Hertha, at the sight of it, felt a cold shiver run through her. It seemed as if she were looking into an abyss of human misery that would swallow her too. XXXII On the afternoon of the second Christmas festival, the two friends met again, after a separation of nearly six weeks. Ulrich, who had arrived home on Christmas Eve, waited a day to see if Leo would turn up; but when he neither came nor sent word, he started off to call on him. He found him in his study, still arrayed in nightshirt and dressing-gown, reclining on the sofa, enveloped in clouds of smoke. "What a sluggard you've become," cried Ulrich, with a laugh, but his heart sank at the sight of the waste of so much splendid vigour. The entrance of his friend gave Leo a slight shock of alarm. But he suppressed it immediately, and rising, hurried to greet him. Ulrich was aghast at the red, bloated appearance of Leo's face, and the puffiness of his eyes. "What is the matter with you? Are you ill?" he inquired. Leo answered, laughing, "It's simply laziness--an attack of laziness, that's all," and he gave his friend's hands a pressure that was nerveless and limp. Ulrich said nothing, but continued to gaze searchingly at Leo's features in solicitous anxiety. "Sit down and make yourself at home. Won't you have a hot drink. Coffee, tea, grog, negus, eh? Damned cold out of doors. I preferred the storm. Have you had a comfortable journey? It's a long way from Berlin here. Why do you look at me so hard? You'll know me soon." "I beg your pardon. I will look at something else if you wish it." "Devil take it! Don't be so touchy, man. One has to be so beastly careful in talking to you. Now, have a cognac to please me. I have got it here--old Hennessy--it would pick up a corpse." "You know that I never drink spirits or liqueurs." "Very unwise. In the highest degree unwise, dear Ulrich. One ought to provide for one's bodily needs. It's a duty we all owe ourselves. Excuse me if I attend to mine." He fetched a flask of cognac from the cupboard of his writing-table, and tossed off hastily three or four glasses, which seemed to have a soothing effect upon him. "You'll think," he said laughingly, "that I am becoming a secret bibber. But, I ask you, what else is a lonely beggar to do, when his heart----" "It is your own fault that you are lonely," interrupted Ulrich. "How my fault?" "You hold yourself aloof from all your neighbours. You seem to have forgotten even the way to Uhlenfelde." "Ho, ho!" "It used to be the custom for you to come over to Uhlenfelde on Christmas Day." "You might have come here as easily."