It grew rapidly darker the lower we came.
Pat lay completely under the covers.
She thrust her hand in to my chest, under the shirt; I felt her hand on my skin, then her breath, her lips, and then her tears.
Cautiously, so she should not notice the turn, Koster swung the car in a long sweep on the market place of the next village and drove slowly back.
The sun had vanished when we drove again over the summit, and already, in the east, pale and clear between the rising clouds, stood the moon.
We drove back, the chains ground over the snow with a monotonous sound; the evening became still; I sat motionless, and felt Pat's tears on my heart as if a wound were bleeding there.
An hour later I was sitting in the hall.
Pat was in her room and Koster had gone to the weather bureau to find out whether it was going to snow.
It had turned misty outside, the moon now had a ring, and, soft and grey as velvet, the night stood at the window.
After a while Antonio came and joined me.
A few tables away sat a tight, round, bumptious fellow like a cannon ball, in homespun coat, and knickerbockers too short for him; he had a baby face with pouting lips and cold eyes, and on top a round red head without hair, shiny as a billiard ball.
Beside him was a thin woman with deep shadows under the eyes and a troubled, imploring expression.
The cannon ball was lively, his head in constant movement, his rosy little hands describing plump gestures.
"Marvellous up here, quite superb.
The panorama, the air, the attention!
You're well off, really—"
"Bernhard," said his wife gently.
"Truly, I wouldn't mind some of it, coddled and looked after!" Oily laughter. "Still, I don't begrudge you—"
"Ach, Bernhard," said his wife dispiritedly.
"What now, come now," the cannon ball clattered gaily on, "you couldn't have better anywhere.
Why, you're in Paradise here.
Think of us down below there.
Out again every morning into the muck.
You be thankful you're spared that.
But I'm glad to see you getting on so well here."
"Bernhard, I'm not getting on well," said his wife.
"But my child," Bernhard bustled on, "don't you complain.
It's we ought to do that.
Bankruptcy everywhere, always on the go, taxes—still, we're glad to be able to do it, of course."
The woman said nothing.
"A nice lad," said I to Antonio.
"Is he not!" replied Antonio. "Since the day before yesterday he's been here, talking down every attempt of his wife's with his 'Wonderfully well off you are.'
He just refuses to see, you know—neither her fear, her sickness, or her loneliness.
And all the time he's probably living in Berlin with another cannon ball just like himself, paying his duty call here every six months, rubbing his hands, jovial, studying only his own convenience.
And not listening to anything.
You often see it up here."
"How long has his wife been here?"
"About two years."
A troop of young people ran giggling into the hall.
Antonio laughed.
"They've come from the post.
They've been sending a telegram to Roth."
"Who's Roth?"
"He's the next to go out.
They've wired him not to come home because of an influenza epidemic in the town, and that he'd best stay on here.
One of the usual jokes.
Because they have to stay themselves, you see."
I looked out the window at the grey satin-hung mountain.
It just isn't true all this, thought I; just isn't real, it doesn't go like this.
This is only a stage where they act a bit at death.