And Gurdweill replied in a coaxing voice (his lips actually moved): ‘Of course, my dearest, of course. Do you think I like being on my own? Don’t you know how much I love you? Don’t you know that I’m always ready, every minute of the day and night, to give my life for you?’

‘And Gustl?’

‘Ah, that was nothing! It was only because I was so miserable. It doesn’t mean a thing. It was only because I thought you didn’t love me and that I didn’t count for anything with you, and my suffering was too great to bear … That’s all! How could you believe for a single minute that Gustl means anything to me? But now I know that you love me, it’s all over and forgotten. Let’s not talk about it anymore.’

All this time a happy smile illuminated Gurdweill’s hollow face. He looked like a baby who had been given his favourite toy after crying for it for hours, and who was now playing with it and smiling contentedly to himself. Gurdweill’s face was lowered to the table, and his fingers were playing nervously with his pipe, which had gone out in the meantime, when Heidelberger burst noisily into the room.

‘Well, Herr Doktor, I hope you haven’t been too bored?’ He twirled his moustache and winked slyly.

Gurdweill looked up at him with a bemused expression on his face and smiled stupidly. At first he couldn’t understand who this man was and what he was talking about. He fixed his eyes on one of the buttons on Heidelberger’s coat, which was hanging by a thread and seemed about to fall off at any minute and roll on the floor. With a peculiar impatience, Gurdweill waited for the button to fall. Let it fall and get it over! Why was it pretending to be so innocent? As if it didn’t know. It was taking its time out of spite. Just because Gurdweill wanted it to fall now, it wouldn’t!

‘Gustl didn’t make too much of a nuisance of herself, hmm? We all know what women are like,’ continued Heidelberger.

‘N-no, not at all …’ said Gurdweill absent-mindedly. And he stuck out his finger and pointed straight at the loose button, saying firmly, like a doctor to a recalcitrant patient: ‘You must have it fixed at once! It’s going to fall off!’

Heidelberger grasped the button between his finger and thumb, pulled it off, and laid it on the table. Gurdweill looked at the shining black button as if it were a deadly enemy, and smiled triumphantly. Then he suddenly laughed aloud as at some private, highly amusing thought, stuck his extinguished pipe into his mouth, and said between his teeth: ‘And so, Herr Heidelberger, what kept you so long?’