“You ... you must? What does that mean?” Christian did not answer. He raised his eyes and held out a friendly hand to Dr. Voltolini. “And so, if you should come and not find me, don’t be angry at me. We shall meet again.” The doctor clasped his hand firmly and silently. Christian went into the house and up to Karen’s rooms. Fifteen minutes later Niels Heinrich mounted the same stairs. XI A fleck of sunlight trembled on the opposite wall of the courtyard. Its reflection lighted up the mirror over the leather sofa. A feeble fire was burning in the oven. Before going to the funeral Johanna Schöntag had thrown in a few small shovelfuls of coal. The fire crackled a little, but the room was growing cold. Michael Hofmann sat in front of the chessboard. The student Lamprecht had set him a problem, and Michael stared at the board and the chessmen. Occasionally his thoughts converged in a will to find a solution, then they went wandering again. He had now succeeded in turning his mind toward outward things sufficiently to remember the chessmen and their positions. Even in the darkness of the night, during which he slept but rarely, he saw the figures of the two kings. The fleck of sunshine sank lower on the wall, and the snow on the pavement glittered. Michael looked out through the window, and the gleaming of the snow caused his eyes to move. The whiteness--why did it torment him? He wanted to wipe it out or blow it away or cover it. Whiteness was a lie. He got up and walked through the room. The glitter of the sunlight came insolently from the whiteness, and the room was filled with its lying shimmer. He hated it. He stopped and listened and his eyelids twitched. Something floated before his mind, knocked at its door--not so much a forgotten thing as one suppressed and throttled. From his trousers pocket he drew forth a round, tightly-rolled, blackish brown object. He looked at it and began to shudder. For a moment his eyes had the same brooding look as when he regarded the chessmen. Then his fingers grew restless, and, growing paler and paler, he sought to unroll the object in his hand. It was a cloth, a handkerchief. Once it had been white; now it was drenched in blood. It had been white, but now it was black with blood; and the blood had congealed so that the cloth had the toughness of leather and was hard to unfold. At last the surface appeared, and in one corner of it the embroidered initials, R. H. “Whiteness is evil and redness is evil,” Michael whispered to himself, with the look of a beaten dog. He was struggling with a temptation, hunting for a way out, and all his being spoke of despair. He looked about him, hurried to the oven, opened the little iron door, and threw in the blood-drenched handkerchief. When the swift flame flared up he sighed with relief, and stood still and quivering. XII No one was in the rooms. The bed in which Karen had died had been taken away.