The comfortable Landhaus with its pink walls, its green shutters, its sloping roof, the grapevine growing up over the door, the great plane tree in the garden, became as a lost paradise to be described to children at the knee,--with hints of recovery when they were old enough to fight for their own. Though Anna suspected that Pauli supported his sisters and in her heart was bitter about it, she had no courage and less opportunity to reproach him with it. Pauli loved his sisters very much, especially his sister Mimi, and he had never told her the tale of Geza's death brought back by his comrade. How they were to charge a certain hill in Galicia one chilly autumn dawn in the face of the enemy, waiting millions of them, it seemed, after the Russian way of lavish cannon-food. How Geza naturally a laughing man had been leaden-hearted as they went up side by side; even the schnapps served out to the troops had not put heart into him. He had said, "I'm going up because I must, but it's quite useless--I'll never come down again."... Geza loved life ... and when they got up to the top immediately a great splinter of shell struck him in the chest and he looked a last reproachful look at his comrade as he fell against him.... The end of Geza who loved life. No, Pauli couldn't bear to think of that. Some day he meant to tell Mimi of those cruel last moments, when Geza knew, knew that his end was near. ... Perhaps he never would, and then again the day might come when it wouldn't hurt Mimi so much. The children would never understand. And it would be as if Geza, heavy with premonition, had never charged that hill and said those last words,--as if he had never been at all. That was the way of life, but Pauli didn't like to think of it ... all that being no more ... as if you had never been; his bright, strong flesh rejected it. He was, somewhat vaguely to his wife, in business that brought with it frequent mention of the Travel Bureau in the Kaerntnerring and entailed many absences. They had grown accustomed to his travels, and anyway the thoughts of his wife and daughter ran, with that of the rest of the population on what they were going to eat and how they were going to get it, rather than on the coming or going of any non-edible, even husband and father. So, though they were among the relatively well-to-do in the starving city, the two women talked almost entirely of what they had eaten or were going to eat and Hermine was to experience her greatest enthusiasms when scurrying home with a bit of fat or a can of jam. * * * * * The difficulty of getting to Anna's from the Hoher Markt was occupying Frau Stacher's thoughts as she lay awake in the early dawn, watching the day grow stronger, till she could see Haydn leading the young Mozart by the hand, and the gilt of the flat, white vase on the bracket underneath began to glisten faintly in the dull light coming in over the top of the curtains.