But that morning he'd got there too early; it was still deserted and he had been witness to certain dismal preparations for the day. A pale woman in damp, thin garments was washing up the floor, ends of burnt-out matches and cigarettes were piled in a corner, in a little heap on a chair were a few carefully collected cigar ends. The pikkolo under the emphatic direction of a waiter was brushing off the billiard table, the Tarok games were being laid out, the newspapers put into their holders. The pikkolo, who put one in upside down, had forthwith received a box on the ear from the waiter, supplemented by a kick on that part of his undersized person where, however, it would be least injurious; but his reaction was not against the donor of these morning favors, but rather induced the consoling thought that if he ever got to be head-waiter he would return it with interest to whatever pikkolo was then about. The arrival, a bit late, of the buffet Fräulein, with her blond hair too tightly crimped, too thickly puffed, started things at a more lively gait. A pale lavender tint lay over her face--the hair bleach, the rice powder, the long hours in the crowded room. Energetically she proceeded to count out a few lumps of sugar, unlocked noisily from behind the counter; then she looked scrutinizingly at the liqueur and fruit-juice bottles, holding them up to the light, her pale eye appraising the exact condition of their contents. One by one frequenters of the café began to come in, dissipating more and more the forlornness of the place, wiping their feet on the wire mat, putting their bulging umbrellas into the stand, hanging up their dull hats, sitting down in their overcoats, taking packages of paper money from their pockets and putting them on the table just as if it weren't money. Finally the café was quite full and Hermann sitting before his empty cup, smoking and watching apathetically the familiar sights, became conscious of the passage of time. He remembered that Tante Ilde was coming to dinner that day and he wondered what Fanny could have said to make the arrangement possible, it was so unlike Mizzi. Then he looked at his watch and saw with immense relief that he still had a little time, ... a calamity to be even that short distance from home, ... he hoped he'd get back, ... sometime probably he wouldn't. He had been thinking all that morning with an obsessing, nightmarish horror of something that had happened to him in his own office the day before.... Because a pale, uncertain-yeared woman had had nose-bleed, he had been overcome by a horrible nausea, an intolerable, hitherto unknown feeling in the pit of his stomach. Why, he had seen blood, felt blood, smelt blood, worked swiftly, calmly in blood against time and death--and now a pale woman with a nose-bleed.... He'd had to go into the inner office.... It was unbelievable that just _that_ could happen to him. Then after she had