But she delayed and played with the vision in her mind. And then she had a dream. She dreamed that she was in the lobby of a magnificent hotel among many people; but she was clothed only in her shift, and could scarcely move for shame. No one appeared to observe this. She wanted to flee, but saw no door at all. While she looked about her in her misery, the lift suddenly came down from the upper storeys. She rushed into it and the door closed and the lift rose. But her dread did not leave her, and she had a sense of approaching disaster. Voices from without came to her: “There is some one dead--dead in the house.” To stop the lift, she groped for the electric button, but she could not find it. The lift rose higher and higher, and the voices died away. Without knowing how she had come there, she stood in a long corridor along which were the doors of many rooms. In one of the rooms lay a crucifix about two yards long; it was of bronze covered with a patina. She went in, and men moved respectfully aside. Now suddenly she was clothed in a garment of white satin. She kneeled down beside the crucifix. Someone said: “It is one o’clock, we must go to luncheon.” Her heart was like a wound with compassion and yearning. She pressed her lips against the forehead of the image of Christ. The metal body stirred and grew and grew, and assumed the stature of life; and she, more and more tenderly giving herself, infused blood into the image, and gave its skin the colour of life, so that even the wounds of the nails flushed red. Her feeling rose to an ardent pitch of gratitude and adoration. She encircled the body and the feet of the rising Christ, who lifted her as he rose. But one of the gentlemen said: “The gong is sounding for the last call to table.” And at that she awoke. Next morning she went to Crammon, and persuaded him to drive with her to Stolpische Street. XXXII When Christian opened the door, his father stood before him. It was he who had rung the bell. The emotion which this unexpected sight aroused in him was so restrained in its expression that the Privy Councillor’s eyes lost their brief brightness and grew dark again. “May one enter?” he asked, and crossed the threshold. He walked to the middle of the room, placed his hat on the table, and looked about him with astonishment held in check. It was better than he had imagined and also worse. It was cleaner, more respectable, more habitable; it was also more lonely and desolate. “So this is where you live,” he said. “Yes, this is where I live,” Christian repeated, with some embarrassment. “Here and in a room across the court I have lived until now. These were Karen’s rooms.” “Why do you say until now? Are you planning to move again?”