It was two o’clock in the afternoon when he entered his room. He collapsed onto the couch and held his head in his hands. For a long time he sat there in his hat and coat without moving. He looked as if he might have been asleep. But he was far from asleep. It was uncomfortably cold in the room. Their breakfast dishes were still on the table, Thea’s cup empty and his full of the undrunk coffee of the morning, which had collected a brown skin on its surface from the milk. Gurdweill raised his head and gazed around the room with a puzzled look in his eyes: everything in it seemed strange and unconnected to him. The couch on which he was sitting, the bed opposite him, the other furniture in the room — none of it felt close to him. He wondered why he had only become aware of this feeling now, after two years and more. It seemed to him that he had only remained here, among this shabby furniture, for such a long time, because he was unconsciously hoping for something. Somewhere outside this room, there was something for the sake of which it had been worthwhile to go on suffering until the right opportunity presented itself. But now, when … No! He was overcome by a feeling of irrepressible loathing for everything surrounding him. Unthinkingly he rose to his feet and went over to the table. At the sight of Thea’s empty cup he was suddenly flooded by a host of miserable memories, of embarrassing situations that she had brought about, of humiliations and insults without number. And for these things he had ruined his life and perhaps been guilty of the death of another human being! As on a number of other occasions in the past few months, he was suddenly overcome by a fit of blind rage against Thea, a rage that was capable of anything, the kind of rage that perhaps only a woman could arouse. He took the empty cup and hurled it to the floor with all his strength. ‘Good!’ he said aloud, looking with a certain satisfaction at the fragments scattered in all directions. Then he bent down, gathered up the broken pieces, and placed them one by one on the table. The sound of the shattering china still echoed in his ears. Absent-mindedly he took a sip of the cold coffee, and spat it out again immediately into the chamber pot. Then he stationed himself by the window and stood there for a long time watching the falling snowflakes. Inside him, everything was as desolate as an abandoned ruin in a bleak mountain wilderness. There was nothing in the whole world that had any value or was capable of providing a morsel of comfort. All around and everywhere was despairing grief and loss and the proximity of death, and it was strange to see someone hurrying by in the street below, as if there were still anything left worth hurrying for.