Would they hold out, those two who loved each other so, hold out in the dark, grim city that now took heed of little save food? Would they build themselves a house without foundations, in a nameless street, above ruins? Or would Corinne wander alone till her sunset, homeless as a cloud?... Then Frau Stacher became aware of a great exhaustion. The life-force had done with her, was slipping from her body, she could feel it retreating, something finally, inexorably destructive taking its place.... But those two in whom it surged so high, so hot?... It was over. And how is anyone to know that something has happened for the last time until the irrecoverable afterwards? Corinne had, indeed, sweetly said goodby to her aunt, brightly, warmly, visibly leaving her, as always, the gift of her love. But every fibre was straining towards Pauli as she slipped away, a shadow palely-gold about the head, attenuated to last expression in the black sheathe of her coat. Pauli, (how pale, too, as he watched her disappear), was going back to the Travel Bureau he so ably managed, seeing to it that "Protection" and favoritism were practiced to their fullest extent for those travellers who could pay for them.... Pauli who spoke all known languages; Pauli who could conjure up special trains from the void; Pauli who smoothed the way incredibly for foreign millionaires come to see for themselves how things really were in Vienna, or for indigenous exchange lords who knew the time had come to travel; Pauli, to whom almost everything seemed easy.... "Get Birbach to attend to it" was the peace phrase that replaced the references to his luck during the war. Nothing was too good--or too bad--for those that could pay for it. On the other hand Pauli was often impelled to do something for those who couldn't pay. Lately, too, he had been drawn into politics, trying to help leash those dogs of destruction let loose upon his country. He was found to have something hotly convincing in his talk, or he could pierce an adversary with a thin point of ridicule that would make his listeners laugh till their sides ached. It wasn't a meal, but it certainly warmed them and Pauli was always sure of a full house. But now that love for Corinne had begun to waste him, to crumble his other interests and activities. His strength, his time were mostly spent madly, hotly hoping for something, anything, out of the void whence events come,--the void known to every longing heart. Pauli was temperamentally aware of the fluidity of life--for all except the very old, _they_ were caught like fragile shells in the hard stratum of age. It was one of the reasons for his tenderness towards Tante Ilde, and his farewell had in it much of the love of a son, and the pity of the very strong for the very weak. So many out of her little world, in their several ways, had been saying their farewells to her. Of them all, Pauli's alone had it been knowingly the last, could scarcely have been more tender.