Hildegard, because she had ideals, liked to talk about the dignity of die Ehe. He felt a suspicion of disquiet meander under his skin. Because Hildegard had also entered into a different phase. They sat about a lot. They sat on the balcony in the evening, stiffly, officially, deserted. Or they read together. They read Hermann and Dorothea, and Count Keyserling. Frau Fiesel began to treat him very solicitously, almost as if he were ill, pushing a spiritual pillow under his head. Only Onkel Rudi was sceptical, because he was bitter, Hildegard said, because he hated and misunderstood her, he resented her personal happiness.

Listening to Hildegard, or sitting in the neighbourhood of one of Frau Fiesel’s monologues, he sometimes felt he would suffocate. The mind swam feebly in the close, stovey atmosphere that increased with autumn. Faces came and looked at them. There was Fräulein Nusz, and Frau Geheimrat Behrens. There were the solicitous voices that matched Frau Fiesel’s own. For him and Hildegard. Were they yet verlobt? inquired Frau Behrens. He listened beyond, to Onkel Rudi’s gramophone, where Onkel Rudi himself sat inside a palisade of Bach. Hildegard’s voice among the coffee cups, with her nicht, Elyot, wie, Elyot, was sagst du dann, asked for perpetual reassurance that he found himself unwilling to give. He clung to a saving phrase of Bach.

Out of a few weeks had formed this situation, netwise, without his knowing, out of his own vanity. Hildegard’s body, the moment in the forest, the still exciting embraces in corners of the living-room, were a projection of this vanity. He began to feel gauche again, humiliated by the women’s voices, and jealous, he wanted to possess more than Hildegard, himself. So that he excused himself very often, slipped out into the cooler air, beyond the dark and faceless houses, sometimes walked for several miles along the outskirts of the forest, alone with the sound of stirring bracken and already a smell of frost.

Hildegard pouted. She looked angry. Walking alone at night, she said, was a sign of eccentricity.

He thought that she sounded stupid. He looked straight in her pale eyes.

Perhaps, he said, equably, content enough to leave it at that.

Onkel Rudi went walking at night. And look at Onkel Rudi, she said.

Onkel Rudi went walking at night in the rather high-crowned velour hat with the bow that fluttered at the back. His coat was thin and greasy at the elbows. He was retired, an engineer. Onkel Rudi, unconsciously, became a zone of reassurance. Passing him near the tollgate, it was evening, the moon on oaks, you realized it was Onkel Rudi who stood against the tree, you listened to him making water, quietly, you listened to him belch, you heard him laugh, either in relief, or, as Hildegard had said, in madness. But it reassured, the laughter, the private attitude. Like the phrase of Bach. Because Onkel Rudi was at once so very personal and complete. Elyot listened to his own departing footsteps, that became a clearer footnote on himself than any fumbled reasoning.