She took off her light-blue straw hat, a plain cloche, and her short, thick, curly hair sprang up around her face, making it seem even paler. She had a pretty, feminine brow, soft and not too high. She took a white comb out of her purse and fixed her hair. Dr Astel watched her every movement with a melancholy air, blowing thick smoke rings, which the playful breeze snatched from his mouth, buffeted about until they were shapeless, and flung into the night. Two leaves from a nearby chestnut tree suddenly flew onto the pink-and-blue checked tablecloth, and landed next to Gurdweill’s glass. He picked one of them up, raised it to his eyes, and examined it intently. Upon discovering a small yellow patch on one side of the leaf, he tore it off and began absent-mindedly chewing the rest in the intervals between puffs on his cigarette, thinking of Lotte and the explosion of misery he had just witnessed. He did not know how to help her, and sadness gnawed at his heart. He threw the leaf away and turned his head towards the sea of flickering lights below. The hidden city now seemed alien and hostile, and a feeling of anxiety welled up in him for his son and his wife, alone and unprotected somewhere down there. Nobody spoke. Even Dr Astel’s customary good humour seemed to have deserted him, for he maintained a stubborn, uncharacteristic silence. In his disconsolate silence he made Gurdweill think uneasily of a cheerful, high-spirited boy who had suddenly and inexplicably begun to cry. Lotte returned the comb to her purse. Gurdweill, who felt responsible, as usual, for the gloom that had settled on his companions, said to Dr Astel, ‘And where will you spend your holiday this year? Not in the Tyrol?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll go to Vorarlberg. But not before the end of the month.’

After a moment he added, ‘I’d be happy to invite you to join me for a week or two, if you liked.’

Lotte sent Dr Astel a grateful look. In spite of everything he was a good man, she thought, and a good friend.

‘I wish I could. But now, with the baby, it’s impossible. I can’t leave him alone.’

‘Why should you have to look after him?’ Lotte interrupted. ‘What about Thea? And her parents? Surely you can go away for one week?’

‘No, it’s impossible. At any other time I’d be delighted, but not now. Besides, I don’t need a vacation. I feel as fit as a fiddle. But I wish I could send Thea somewhere. She’s the one who’ll need a vacation when she comes out of the hospital.’