At a corner of that desolate street they came upon a very brilliant show-window. They went up to it and stopped as by a common impulse. The shop had long been closed, but in the window was draped a magnificent coat of Russian sable, a symbol of wealth and warmth and adornment. Christian turned to Ruth, and saw the threadbare little cloak in which she shivered. And he saw that she was poor. Then it came into his mind that he too was poor, poor like her, and irrevocably so. He smiled, for the fact seemed significant to him, and he felt a joy that was secret and almost ecstatic. XII Johanna Schöntag’s first visit to Voss passed off in a very commonplace manner. Trying to let him forget that she was a young lady made her more and more conventional. To hide her embarrassment, she was half capricious and half critical in mood. It amused her that there was a rocking-chair in the room. “It reminds one of one’s grandmother,” she said, “and gives one an anachronistic and homelike feeling.” Then she sat down in it and rocked, took candied fruits from her little beaded bag and crushed them on her tongue, which gave her a comical and pouting expression. On the table there was a tea-urn, two cups, and plates with pastry. Voss’s demeanour seemed to say that narrow means did not prevent one from entertaining properly. It amused Johanna. She thought to herself: “If he brings out a photograph album with pictures of himself as a child, I shall giggle right into his face.” And at the same time her heart throbbed with quite other fears. Voss spoke of his loneliness. He alluded to experiences of his own that had made him shy. There were people, he said, who seemed fated to suffer shipwreck in all matters where their hearts were involved. They had to grow calluses of the soul. He was busy doing that. He had never had a friend, though the illusion of friendship often enough. To realize the futility of some great longing was bitterer than to discover the insufficiency of a human being. Johanna’s secret fears grew as she heard him wax sentimental. She said: “This rocking-chair is the nicest thing I’ve come across for long. It gives me a queer, pleasant little sea-sickness. Are you sure the people under you won’t believe that you’ve become a father and are rocking your offspring to sleep?” She laughed and left the chair. Then she drank tea and nibbled at a piece of pastry, and quite suddenly said good-bye and left him. Voss gritted his teeth. His hand was as empty as before. He took a piece of soft cake, formed it into the rude image of a girl, and pierced it with the pin that Christian had given him. The room still held the faint aroma of a woman’s body and garments and clothes and hair. He rocked the empty chair, and talked to an invisible person who was leaning back in it and coquettishly withdrew from his glance. For a while he worked. Then his work wearied him, and his thoughts were busy laying snares.