A car came racing furiously down the road behind them and forced them to step aside. Its headlamps cast a blinding orange glare in front of it. From then on they kept to the side of the road.

Lotte said: ‘Summer nights! Sometimes you can feel them like the body of an ardent young woman. Haven’t you ever felt it? There’s a fragrance about them: it doesn’t matter if they’re mild or sultry; they always smell like a young woman’s body. No wonder nights like this drive some men mad with lust. I can understand it. Especially in the countryside. A black night like this — can’t you feel it breathing and speaking? And how tender and caressing it is, how passionate!’

They began to sense clearly the tender passion of the night. And mingling with it was the tender, supple, fragrant flesh of Lotte herself, who had awoken their senses into a stunned awareness of the night and of her own body. They felt hot, intoxicatingly light-headed, and their mouths were dry. For the first time that night they felt tired. No one spoke. They went on walking down the hill. No cars passed them. The road was deserted and the trees made a wall to their left and their right. The leaves rustled very faintly, almost inaudibly. In the distance a train engine hooted and then was silent. Only their footsteps knocked against the night: tap, tap, tap, the footsteps of Lotte, Dr Astel, and Gurdweill. At that moment none of them would have dreamed of saying a word. No, the night had to be preserved, at least for a while, intact, round and dense, innocent of words. And perhaps these three people would remember it all their lives long, and return to it in their thoughts twenty or thirty years hence, with the sadness of delicate, lingering memories.

And then Lotte let out a smothered little laugh, as if concluding some secret thought. The others started as if woken from a heavy sleep, and for some reason looked embarrassed.

‘Give us a cigarette,’ said Gurdweill.

And all three lit cigarettes.

The road took a sudden bend to the left, revealing a number of isolated houses in the distance. The lights were on in the windows of the houses, and lighted streetlamps began to appear at long intervals. Behind the fence of one of the villas, a dog began to bark at their approach, perhaps the same dog they had heard barking before.

‘We must be coming to Grinzing!’ cried Dr Astel. He looked at his watch in the light of the streetlamp. ‘Ten past eleven! We can still make it! In ten minutes we’ll be at the tram stop.’