cked troughs extended under the lowering sky; but yonder
where the sun hung behind the clouds, a whitish velvet sheen lay on the
waters.

Tonio Kroeger stood enveloped by wind and clamor, lost in this eternal,
ponderous, deafening roar that he loved so much. If he turned and went
away, on a sudden it seemed quite still and warm about him. But at his
back, he knew, was the sea; it called him, enticed him, spoke to him.
And he would smile.

He would go inland through the solitude along meadow paths, and soon
birch woods would receive him, extending far over the rolling country.
He would sit down in the moss and lean against a tree from which he
could see a patch of ocean between the trunks. At times the wind would
carry to him the noise of the surf, like distant boards falling on
each other. The caw of crows above the treetops, hoarse, desolate,
forlorn ... He had a book on his knees, but he read not a line in it.
He was enjoying a deep oblivion, a floating in perfect freedom over
space and time; and only occasionally did it seem as if some pain
quivered through his heart, a short, piercing feeling of longing or
regret, which he was too lazy and too absorbed to question as to its
name and origin.

So passed many a day; he could not have said how many, and had no
desire to know. But then came a day when something happened; happened
while the sun stood in the sky and people were present, and Tonio
Kroeger was not even especially astonished at it.

The very beginning of this day took a festive and delightful form.
Tonio Kroeger awoke very early and quite suddenly, started up from sleep
with a subtle and vague fear, and thought he was looking upon a
miracle, into some enchanted, fairy-like illumination. His room, with a
glass door and a balcony looking out on the Sound, and divided by a
thin white gauze curtain into living-room and bedroom, was papered in
delicate colors and furnished with light, bright articles, so that it
always made a cheerful, sunny impression. But now his sleep-drunk eyes
saw an unearthly transfiguration and illumination before him, saw his
room immersed to the farthest corner in an unspeakably lovely, hazy
rose-glow, which gilded walls and furnishings and caused the gauze
curtain to gleam with a mild ruddy light ... For a long time Tonio
Kroeger did not understand what was happening. But when he stood at the
glass door and looked out, he saw that it was the rising sun.

For several days it had bee