‘I asked you to come, Rudolf’ — Gurdweill noticed that for the first time she called him by his given name — ‘not because I have a cold, but because there’s something I have to talk to you about. Everything depends on it now … I have to make one last attempt first. I have to have it out with you once and for all. I’ve seen that you don’t understand. For two whole years you’ve been blind. All the hints, all the innuendos that a baby would have understood were like water off a duck’s back to you — even though in other matters you see right to the heart of things. The reason isn’t clear to me. Perhaps it’s because you simply didn’t notice. However much this hurts my feminine pride, I’m forced to conclude that your feelings are so involved elsewhere that you simply can’t see what’s under your nose. Believe me, the day will come when you realise that you’ve been deluding yourself. I’ve thought about it a lot, for weeks, for months. You’ve been seeking your happiness in a place where it doesn’t exist, where it can’t exist … when all the time your happiness was right there waiting for you, and all you had to do was stretch out your hand to take it … But you never did. It’s not too late yet. And that’s why I asked you to come.’

She took a deep breath and lit her cigarette, which had gone out. At that moment there was a sudden blast on a car horn from outside, which seemed to Gurdweill to come from another world. Lotte took a few puffs of her cigarette, one after another, and flicked the ash into a blue pottery ashtray. Gurdweill followed her movements, his heart heavy. He sensed a terrible storm blowing up and he wanted to stop it, but did not know how. On the other hand, he felt a perverse desire to hear it all, although he knew that what was to come would be painful, and might expose things better left hidden. He sat still. Out of the corner of his right eye, he took in the name of the author of a book lying on the table: Arthur Lerchner, which for some reason he transformed to Arthur Merling, prompting him to read it again, letter by letter. This process of transformation took place quite unthinkingly, confining itself exclusively to the area of visual perception, and reaching his conscious mind only as a vague, elusive reflection. His eyes looked and read wrongly of their own accord, corrected themselves and read wrongly again, and then the whole process repeated itself once more.