Unthinkingly he entered a little café. He came back to reality with a jolt. Ah, what would he do, what would he do! He groaned in despair. He sat down at a table and supported his aching head in his hands, just as Lotte had done on that last afternoon.

‘It’s all one to me!’ he replied to the waiter who asked him for his order.

‘Coffee, beer?’

He nodded without looking at him.

The waiter went off and returned with a cup of coffee. For a long time he sat with his head in his hands without touching the coffee. The hour of midnight approached, closing time for cafés of this kind, and the waiter came to settle the bill.

Gurdweill went out into the night again. The streets were deserted. It was not raining, but the paving stones were still wet from the previous rain. Gurdweill crossed the Sophia Bridge. Suddenly it came home to him that what had happened was irreversible. He sensed something around him and inside him rushing with terrifying speed into a deep pit. No force in the world could stop it. And even if he had been able to stop it, he might not have wanted to. Dimly he saw something coming to an end in front of his eyes, but he did not know how or what. Only now he realised how much he needed Lotte, how attached he was to her. Without his being aware of it, she had been his last support; unconsciously he had been nourished by her, by the mere fact of her presence — and now the end had come. Lotte was no longer on earth and nothing had any value anymore, and he himself had no value anymore. He wanted to shout at the top of his voice to all the world that Lotte was gone forever.

He walked slowly past the Praterstern, his head hunched between his shoulders. By force of habit his feet carried him home. In front of the door he paused for a moment, as if deliberating with himself. In the end he rang the bell. Thea was already asleep; the room was in darkness. Gurdweill did not light the lamp. He pushed the bedclothes piled on the couch to the wall and sat down. For a long time he sat still in the dark. Then he lay down without taking off his clothes or making his bed, and fell into a heavy sleep.