could feel their voices, hers and his, ringing silvery like bells
in the frozen, motionless air of the first twilight. How perfect it
was, how VERY perfect it was, this silvery isolation and interplay.

She sipped the hot coffee, whose fragrance flew around them like bees
murmuring around flowers, in the snowy air, she drank tiny sips of the
Heidelbeerwasser, she ate the cold, sweet, creamy wafers. How good
everything was! How perfect everything tasted and smelled and sounded,
here in this utter stillness of snow and falling twilight.

'You are going away tomorrow?' his voice came at last.

'Yes.'

There was a pause, when the evening seemed to rise in its silent,
ringing pallor infinitely high, to the infinite which was near at hand.

'WOHIN?'

That was the question--WOHIN? Whither? WOHIN? What a lovely word! She
NEVER wanted it answered. Let it chime for ever.

'I don't know,' she said, smiling at him.

He caught the smile from her.

'One never does,' he said.

'One never does,' she repeated.

There was a silence, wherein he ate biscuits rapidly, as a rabbit eats
leaves.

'But,' he laughed, 'where will you take a ticket to?'

'Oh heaven!' she cried. 'One must take a ticket.'

Here was a blow. She saw herself at the wicket, at the railway station.
Then a relieving thought came to her. She breathed freely.

'But one needn't go,' she cried.

'Certainly not,' he said.

'I mean one needn't go where one's ticket says.'

That struck him. One might take a ticket, so as not to travel to the
destination it indicated. One might break off, and avoid the
destination. A point located. That was an idea!

'Then take a ticket to London,' he said. 'One should never go there.'

'Right,' she answered.

He poured a little coffee into a tin can.

'You won't tell me where you will go?' he asked.

'Really and truly,' she said, 'I don't know. It depends which way the
wind blows.'

He looked at her quizzically, then he pursed up his lips, like
Zephyrus, blowing across the snow.

'It goes towards Germany,' he said.

'I believe so,' she laughed.

Suddenly, they were aware of a vague white figure near them. It was
Gerald. Gudrun's heart leapt in sudden terror, profound terror. She
rose to her feet.

'They told me where you were,' came Gerald's voice, like a judgment in
the whitish air of twilight.

'MARIA! You come like a ghost,' exclaimed Loerke.

Gerald did not answer. His presence was unnatural and ghost