Frau Fiesel was kind. It was the sort of kindness that made you feel you were on the verge of trespassing. It made Elyot choose his words carefully, a wadding to what he wanted to express, out of pure respect for Frau Fiesel’s sensibility. Both physically and mentally she was soft. You felt if you touched her she would sink in, the outer, unresisting flesh, it would sink and never come out again, remain like the dip in an eiderdown. So it made you go warily. He wanted to avoid all unpleasantness, like mention of her husband, the late Professor, or economics, or Vaterland. The words of Schiller drew from her voice a volume of quivering platitude.

Fitting himself in, locating and skirting the danger zones, was a tentative, if not unpleasant process. His mind began to pursue and catch the foreign idiom. He could nearly always express himself. Or almost. His argument lumbered in a German way. As if his ideas meandered in a world of featherbeds, recognizable, but a little inflated, changed. He was changing in himself, mentally. He found that he had become a person. Other people, Herr Richter at lunch, asked him his opinion. He had, he was permitted, he was expected to have a mind, an opinion of his own. This was suddenly awfully important.

Walking in the old town, that had remained untouched by recent passions or present uncertainty and discontent, Elyot Standish enjoyed this important discovery. There was a balance and proportion in the blue and golden renascence town that went well with his frame of mind. He walked firmly down the streets. He was very receptive. He wanted to absorb, there was no chimney, no façade too distant to possess, to assimilate. He stood at the street corners and smelt with pleasure a gust of baking bread, or heard the dray rattle over cobblestones. All this had come to his senses for the first time.

Meeting Hildegard Fiesel in the street, just by chance, out of other faces, they walked homeward. It was about lunchtime. Hildegard was secretary to a dentist. She came in to lunch, she ate quickly, resentfully, then she rushed off to her work again. He was still upset by Hildegard. He was sorry the morning he met her in the street. She clashed. She was a discordant note in his freshly acquired complacency. And she talked, a great deal, some of which he couldn’t understand, she pointed out things of interest, she pointed out the palace, which he must see, she said, it was a place of great historical importance. Hildegard made him feel inconsequential, that he had all time on his hands, while she was a superior being, a breadwinner, of economic significance. He had discovered also that she was four years older than himself. And this gave her a surplus of superiority. He was still young enough to stand in awe of age.

They must see something of each other, they must go walking at weekends, because she was free then of course, she said, as they climbed the stairs together.