how a being of the night feels."

She made no reply.

"Give me your hand," he said, "I will lead you."

She gave him her hand. Soon they saw the lights of the city. He took her
to her house; but when they reached it, they did not say good-bye: they
looked at each other with dazed, helpless, seeking eyes; they were both
pale and speechless.

Eleanore hastened into the hall, but turned as she reached the stairs,
and waved to him with a smile, as if the two were separated by a hazy
distance. As he fixed his eyes on the spot where he saw the slender
figure disappear, he felt as if something were clutching his throat.

IV

Without the slightest regard for time, without feeling tired, without
definite thoughts, detached from the present and all sense of
obligation, Daniel wandered aimlessly through the streets. A low dive on
Schuett Island saw him as a late guest. He sat there with his hands
before his eyes, neither seeing nor hearing nor feeling, all crouched up
in a bundle. Dirty little puddles of gin glistened on the top of the
table, the gamblers were cursing, the proprietor was drunk.

The fire alarm drove him out: there was a fire in the suburbs of
Schoppershof. The sky was reddened, it was drizzling. It seemed to
Daniel that the air was reeking with the premonition of a heart-crushing
disaster. Above the Laufer Gate a sheaf of sparks was whirling about.

Just then the melody for which he had waited so long throughout so many
nights of restless despair arose before him in a grandiose circle. It
seemed as if born for the words of the "Harzreise": "With the dim
burning torch thou lightest for him the ferries at night over bottomless
paths, across desolate fields."

In mournful thirds, receding again and again, the voices sank to earth;
just one remained on high, alone, piously dissociated from profane
return.

He hummed the melody with trembling lips to himself, until he met the
nineteenth-century Socrates with his followers in the Rosenthal. They
were still gipsying through the night.

They all talked at once; they were going to the fire. Daniel passed by
unrecognised. The shrill voice of the painter Kropotkin pierced the air:
"Hail to the flames! Hail to those whose coming we announce!" The
laughter of the slough brothers died away in the distance.

Gertrude was standing at the head of the stairs with a candle in her
hand; she had been waiting there since twelve o'clock.