Once she came to him, it was springtime, you could hear the drip of melting snow, and the sound of thawing wood, she bent and held her face against his cheek.

Elyot, she said, her voice thick with bitterness and passion.

He did not look up, move, went on reading the book, his breath held in, withdrawing inside himself, away from Hildegard. So that she went and stood by the window, her fingers jerking at the little acorn that dangled from the blind.

She could kill herself, she said, and nobody would care.

Springtime also, Eastertime, when the edge of the forest was sown with black overcoats, very bürgerlich on holiday or Sunday afternoons, sitting on the municipal seats, or admiring the groups of formal sculpture. Frau Fiesel announced that the Rosenheims would take coffee on Saturday.

Mutti, nein, said Hildegard, red. How could she make her sit with her employer, her Jewish employer at that? No. it was bad enough, the necessity to work, but am Kaffeetisch, with Rosenheim!

Frau Fiesel said it was a Pflicht, and Herr Rosenheim was an upright man. And very soon it was Saturday.

Herr Rosenheim was a small, bright, apologetic Jew. He had shaved too close, his skin shone, altogether he was shining bright, as if to make the best of things. And he smiled, he smiled too much, to put you at your ease, out of his own uneasiness, his whole body quivered with an eagerness to please. His smile smelt of some kind of antiseptic wash with which he had gargled before setting out. Now he hovered on the carpet edge, and sidestepped in doorways to let other people pass.

Frau Fiesel was overjoyed. She said so several times. She ran, or she sailed like a balloon on a gust of gratitude, she sailed in a swish of skirts to fetch a vase for the flowers Frau Dr Rosenheim had brought.

Frau Dr Rosenheim said that already she had forgotten the winter. She patted the golden ball of cowslips she was holding in her other hand. She fluffed them up with a little, light, nervous motion of the fingers.

Cowslips made her ready to forgive. Perhaps she was sentimental, she said.

Her husband laughed. She was sentimental, she was sometimes quite stupid, lightheaded, in fact. He could not heap up too much derogatory praise. My wife, he explained, is a Viennese.

For six mornings now, the Frau Doktor said, something had made her sing as she stirred her bath.

She asked Elyot had he ever been affected in the same way.

He said yes, though he couldn’t remember if he ever had. But Frau Dr Rosenheim was like that.

Here Dr Rosenheim explained his wife was a Künstlerin, in temperament at least. He blushed with pleasure. He hovered over her with his eyes.

The Frau Doktor sighed. She said he always made excuses. Then she laughed, and everybody else.

Kaffee, Frau Doktor? asked Hildegard.

The cup descending firmly rounded a definite period. Hildegard was silence. She took possession of the room, picking at crumbs, or looking at her shoe. Sometimes she blushed too. She slopped the coffee in the saucer when she gave it to Herr Rosenheim. Hildegard sat with her eyes cast down. Her eyes watered when she bit her tongue.