‘No,’ mumbled Gurdweill, ‘she’s not busy at the office. But she likes to go out for a while in the evenings. After a whole day at work she deserves it. She really can’t be expected to sit at home and look after the baby after working so hard all day.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Lotte sarcastically, ‘how could you possibly expect such self-sacrifice …’

‘I don’t think you’ve seen my Martin yet,’ Gurdweill said, changing the subject. ‘Would you like … if you’re interested, that is …’

Lotte gave him an enigmatic look and stood up. She did not want to hurt her host, whose appearance for some reason seemed to her profoundly pathetic. She went up to the carriage, bent over the peacefully sleeping baby, and looked at him unsympathetically for a while in the light of the oil lamp, which Gurdweill had taken off the table. Standing there with the lamp in his hands Gurdweill was suddenly overcome by the strangest feeling — a feeling that froze his blood and sent a shiver down his spine. It suddenly seemed to him that Lotte was only looking at Martin in order to ascertain if he was still alive. There was something about the way she was looking at him … Gurdweill bent over the other side of the carriage, with his head almost touching Lotte’s, and tried to hear the baby’s breathing. But he couldn’t hear anything, and he was seized by a terrible dread. His heart stopped beating. He put the lamp down on the floor next to the carriage, and threw himself on his son in such violent agitation that the child woke up screaming. The whole thing took no more than a second. Then he lifted the oil lamp from the floor and put it back on the table. He was as pale as death.

Lotte cried anxiously: ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong, Gurdweill?’

‘Oh, nothing! It’s nothing!’ His breath came in short, laborious pants. ‘It was only my imagination …’

And he began mechanically rocking the baby, whose screams immediately stopped. For a moment Lotte went on standing and staring at him, and then she sat down on the couch again. There was a silence broken only by the faint sound of the rubber wheels on the floor. At the bottom of the street someone shouted in a rough, unpleasant voice, ‘Throw it down! Go on, throw it! I’ll catch it for sure!’ And right after that came the sound of footsteps disappearing into the distance. The darkness closed up again like still waters over a stone. Gurdweill came and sat down beside Lotte again, smiling shame-facedly, as if he had been caught red-handed.

‘He’s fallen asleep again,’ he grunted in embarrassment, and stole an anxious look at Lotte, eager for her judgement as an artist who had just displayed his paintings.