After a while a sleepy servant showed him to a small room on the second floor. There was an iron stove standing in the corner, but the fire was not lit. Gurdweill sat down on the bed and stayed there for a long time without moving. It may have been about five o’clock when he suddenly stood up, as if he had come to a serious decision, pushed the blue-and-white striped quilt up to the head of the bed, and carefully inspected the sheet. It seemed clean enough, but by the time he had finished his inspection Gurdweill had forgotten what he wanted, and he sat down again. There was a muffled creak from the next-door room, which immediately subsided, but Gurdweill shuddered at the sound and looked wildly round the room — without, however, discovering anything suspicious. He stood up again, went up to the wardrobe, and opened it. The wardrobe was empty. It exuded a dull, stale smell of cheap perfume: the smell typical of loose women. For a moment he regretted coming here, but the next minute the feeling was gone. He picked up a yellowing piece of old newspaper, which was lying on the bottom of the wardrobe, shut the door, and began to read it. When he saw that it was two months old, he crumpled it up and threw it into a corner. All of a sudden the memory of the night’s events hit him like a slap in the face, and he began rushing around the room like a caged animal. The room suddenly seemed to have had all the air drained out of it, there was nothing to breathe, and Gurdweill opened the window wide. Shafts of cold whipped his cheeks. He felt a sudden urge to run home and do something. It was impossible to leave things the way they were! What on earth was he doing here? He did not know exactly what he had to do, but a vague feeling told him that he should be there now, where matters could be mended, something could be changed. He banged the window shut and started to leave the room. But when he passed the bed he was overcome by a great weakness — a sudden paralysis seemed to have attacked his limbs — and he was obliged to sit down. He was incapable of moving a muscle. He sat with his head on his chest, withdrawn into himself, like a lifeless dummy. Something buzzed incessantly in his head, seething and bubbling like boiling water. He distinctly heard a voice behind him saying maliciously, ‘The Herr Doktor will sleep on the couch, as usual!’ and he felt mortally insulted, furious, and in actual physical pain. He needed to turn his head and deny something, to protest, to shout at the top of his voice, to hit out in all directions — but his body was made of lead. Iron whips could not have made him move a muscle. But the voice said again, this time to his face: ‘He’s not a man at all! Could anyone really call that little creature a man? He’s nothing but an idiot! Look at him sitting there: I can do what I like to him and he won’t open his mouth. What a joke!’ Gurdweill suffered inexpressible torture, but he did not have the strength to move. He knew the voice well. A voice that required no words to insult him to the depths of his being — he knew it well. But where and when had he heard it? If only he knew! And then another voice spoke, and this time he knew for certain that it was Lotte’s. He even saw her standing in the corner, between the wardrobe and the washstand, wearing a flowery blue silk kimono, and she said, ‘What? You won’t do a thing to him! Nothing, you hear? From now on he belongs to me and me alone — and you have no part in him!’ This was very strange … So, there was still a way out — all was not yet lost. Ah, Lotte, Lotte! If not to her, to whom could he turn now? But Thea — suddenly he knew it was Thea, even though he could not see her — responded by bursting into loud laughter, which cut into his flesh like a blunt saw. ‘Yours, is he? Yours? Don’t make me laugh! Who married him, you or me? And who gave him a baby? And who made a man of him? Answer that if you can! Ask Herr Heidelberger — he knows everything!’ Gurdweill shuddered at the name. He was afraid that she would tell Lotte something else, something he would rather she did not know. But he could do nothing to stop her. And Thea went on screaming: ‘You think you can just walk in and take over, do you? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But I’m still alive! And I tell you again, and Herr Heidelberger is my witness, that I’ll do as I wish with him! No one can prevent me, least of all you!’ Lotte took a step forward, and pleaded in a voice choked with tears, to which Gurdweill could hardly bear to listen: ‘Please, don’t be so cruel. Haven’t you got a woman’s heart? I beg you, let him go … What do you need him for? Take Herr Heidelberger instead — it makes no difference to you, after all — and let him go. Look, I’m begging you on my knees,’ and Lotte actually dropped to her knees, ‘let him go! Don’t be so hard-hearted!’ ‘Never! I’ll never let you have him! And I’ll take Heidelberger too! I’ll take whomever I like — and you’ll have nothing! And now enough! Why are you still alive? There’s nothing for you here! Why don’t you go away and die? The world will get on perfectly well without you, won’t it, Herr Heidelberger? Prepare yourself, we’re going to put an end to it right now!’ Gurdweill saw something flashing towards the kneeling Lotte, and suddenly he knew that it was a knife and that Thea was going to kill her. He made a tremendous effort and hit out with all his strength in the direction where Thea should have been standing. His hand hit the corner of the bed, and Lotte disappeared.