Up until the time he entered a private school, at about the age of ten, he had shared with her everything he experienced, that little bit (or was it a lot?). Klara had had no brothers or sisters, and he might as well have had none, for his older sisters did not bother with him at all. But since that time, he had never asked anyone about her. How could that be? He leaned back. She was a religious child, he still remembered. And then he asked himself: What could have become of her? For a time, he was alarmed by the thought that she might have died. An immeasurable feeling of anxiety came over him in the narrow, crowded compartment. Everything seemed to confirm this hypothesis. She had been a sickly child; she was not particularly happy at home; she cried often. Without a doubt, she is dead. The doctor couldn’t bear it any longer. He jostled the sleeping people and pushed his way between them into the corridor of the car. There he opened a window and stared out into the blackness where sparks were dancing. That calmed him. And when he later returned to the compartment, in spite of the discomfort of his position, he fell quickly asleep.

His reunion with his two married sisters did not pass without embarrassing moments. The three of them had forgotten how far apart they had remained despite their kinship, and they tried for a time to behave like brothers and sisters. Gradually, however, they came around to an unspoken agreement to take refuge in that polite intermediate tone that social intercourse has invented to fit all possible cases.

He was at the house of his younger sister, whose husband was particularly well off. He was a manufacturer with the title of imperial councillor. And it was after the dinner’s fourth course that the doctor asked, “Tell me, Sophie, what ever became of Klara?”

“Klara who?”

“I can’t remember her last name. The little one, you know who I mean? The neighbor’s daughter whom I used to play with as a child.”

“Oh, you mean Klara Söllner?”

“Söllner, that’s it, Söllner. Now I remember—yes, old Söllner was that horrible old man. But what about Klara?”

The sister hesitated. “She got married and now she lives very much in seclusion.”

“Yes,” said the honorable councillor, and his knife screeched across his plate; “very much in seclusion.”

“You know her too?” said the doctor, turning to his brother-in-law.

“Yes . . . well, very incidentally. She is rather well known here.” The two spouses exchanged a look of complicity. The doctor saw that for one reason or another it was unpleasant for them to talk about this subject, and he asked no further questions.

But the honorable councillor showed all the more enthusiasm for this theme once the woman of the house had left the two gentlemen to their black coffee.