Tilly's mother was dying in a back room, reached by a third stairway in the court of an old house, and Tilly never answered Mizzi back, was never "fresh" and it was quite evident that she never dreamed of giving notice but only of giving satisfaction. In face of Mizzi's pleasant, flowing briskness that could, however, so easily curdle into thick displeasure, Tante Ilde, though she longed to stay, could but say goodbye to Hermann, with a secret pressure of his hand. For a moment she felt the encircling warmth of his great chest and shoulders as he bent down to kiss her. Then he sank heavily back into his chair. She turned at the door for a last sight of him, but already he was plunged in his thoughts and did not look up again. She could have wept for Hermann then and there. As she followed Mizzi down the stairs, they met two young-old women with pale, head-heavy babies in their arms. "Manny's patients," said Mizzi who was really a terrible woman, an abysmal contempt in her voice, "I don't know how I put up with it." "Manny is very ill," answered Tante Ilde gently. "Nerves," returned Mizzi promptly, finally. "We'd starve if I hadn't started in." "You are a wonder," said Tante Ilde, and quite honestly she thought it was little short of a miracle, how Mizzi in that dreadful city had not only wooed but won fortune. Of course, they all knew that Fanny had started her, but even so she was a wonder, making money that way. She would survive. It was beings like Hermann who went under,--gentle, loving, wise, once-strong Hermann. Her thoughts clung tenaciously to Hermann, slumped down into his chair, Hermann who hadn't looked back at her. She couldn't know that he had, for quite a while, been conscious of her loving touch on his arm, and that he was thinking, "sometime I'll tell Tante Ilde about Marie." Yes, while he was still able to talk clearly of precious things. It was one of his worst days. Often on such days he didn't keep his office hours ... the uselessness of the terrible struggle. In that city of misery, let a few more die in those black hours before dawn, without warmth or food or even a match to strike a light that those who loved them could see them go. He was losing, and was conscious of its slipping from him, that strong professional feeling of saving life, any life, just to save it, fulfilling a deep instinct, working according to habit that was as natural to him as breathing. Sometimes nothing mattered, not even Mizzi's lash-like tongue on his bare nerves. On other days, difficult as it was to get over the open places, he would leave the house quite early in the morning, trying to shake off its devitalizing atmosphere. There was a café off the Opernring, he didn't have to cross the Ring itself to get to it, where they knew him and his little ways; sometimes he would sit for hours at a certain table watching the coming and going.