Gurdweill was silent. He sipped the coffee the waiter placed before him apathetically. Through the gap between the curtains he saw people passing with their umbrellas up: so the shower was not yet over. Sadness beyond measure filled him. ‘Yes,’ he reflected, ‘man is a puny creature — he can be driven mad by a cloudburst or a mosquito.’ He looked at Ulrich, as if to find support for this private conclusion. He saw that the latter’s chin was cleft as usual, cleft with a kind of self-important smugness, and that his black-and-white striped tie was impeccably tied and lay right in the middle of his chest as if fixed there with invisible nails. All these childish efforts suddenly seemed ridiculous to him. And as if in grotesque contrast, the contorted, fear-ridden face of Franzi Mitteldorfer appeared again before his eyes. His heart began to pound.

‘Did she stay long?’ he asked Ulrich, as if to distract himself.

‘No. She didn’t even sit down. She only asked about you and said she would come back later. She asked you to wait for her. And here she is!’ He looked towards the revolving door, where Lotte Bondheim at that moment appeared.

She approached their table with a hurried tapping of her high heels, casting her eyes about for a place to put her dripping umbrella. Perczik took it from her, stood it underneath the table, and chivalrously gave her his seat.

Gurdweill looked at her enquiringly as she sat down beside him, and found that her face was drawn and had grown paler since the last time they met, which touched his heart.

‘How are you, Gurdweill? I haven’t seen you for ages!’ She smiled faintly. ‘If we meet so seldom, in the end we won’t recognise each other …’

‘There’s no danger of that,’ said Gurdweill seriously. ‘Not as far as I’m concerned, anyway.’

‘And how is Thea? Will she be staying at the sanatorium much longer?’

This question apparently escaped of its own accord and made Lotte wring her brown glove nervously between her fingers (although Gurdweill was too ashamed to admit the truth, all his friends knew, from Thea herself, the real nature of the ‘illness’ that had sent her to the sanatorium).

‘About ten days longer, I imagine. If everything’s all right …’ Gurdweill disliked talking about his wife to other people in general, and particularly to Lotte, who he knew was hostile to Thea.

Lotte went on compulsively: ‘I meant to visit her but something always prevented me … before you turn around the day’s gone … And you, Ulrich,’ she interrupted herself with an evident effort, ‘you’re still sitting here exactly as I left you an hour ago. How long can you people go on sitting in cafés? Don’t you ever get tired of it?’