She came out onto the front walk to greet him. Inside, they hung on each other and sobbed like children. She fed him some sausage and then they fell asleep, exhausted.

He awoke with her at his bedside. They spoke as if he were the one convalescing. She had recently had a visit from Lasker-Schüler, who was currently obsessed with a Pole named von Twardowski. Paul seemed inconsolable, devastated by the news about Hans.

She’d received condolence letters from everyone. Some from boys Murnau knew: Conrad Veidt; that other boy with the weight problem; Walter Spiess from that Baltic family.

They shared a pot of tea and some fruit. She sat Indian-style on the bed. The lines of her throat were still beautiful. Her eyes seemed to be fighting against smoke. She worried about Lasker-Schüler’s plans for a memorial evening, and hoped he would have a talk with the woman. The New Youth Group was helping to fund it.

She worried about his health. She urged him to try to transfer to civil duty.

He asked after her health. Her heart difficulties had started up again.

She said that she hoped he would come live with her, after the war. She said that it was what Hans would have wanted.

The offer set him off on a weeping fit despite himself. She waited and then let herself out.

Around dawn, she came back to his bedroom, and lay down beside him. He kissed her. She was crying. He held her in his arms. They were unable to speak, but together under the covers, they fell back to sleep.

When they woke, they lay together like lovers. She asked how he went on. He told her that ambition was at least something; and that he now lived animalistically and had shut off everything spiritual. She said she was sure that wasn’t true.

At the end of his leave he tucked her in for a nap. She was too demoralized by his leaving to see him off. In his last few minutes in the house, he stripped, and then remade, the bed in Hans’s room.

Before he left her, he was only able to say, “This was all my fault.” She shushed him, crying. She kissed him again. He left the house. Back out on the street, he murmured, Dixi et salvi animam meam. I have spoken and saved my soul. But he hadn’t.