othing new to them on
excursions, not to speak of worse. It amused them, and, when Wolfgang
lifted his partner high up into the air with a loud shout of triumph
and swung him several times round his head, they clapped their
hands.

Wolfgang was very much out of breath by this time. When they got out
of the wood they had to proceed more slowly; they might have trodden
some of the people to death in the more inhabited parts, for the fine
villas were already commencing. What a crowd! People were pushing and
squeezing each other at the place where the electric cars started.
Wolfgang and Artur posted themselves there too: what a joke it was to
see how the people who wanted to go by them elbowed each other. It was
still pretty light and as warm as summer, but it would soon be quite
dark, and the later it was the larger the crowd would be. The two stood
there laughing, looking quietly on at the throng. What did it matter to
them if they did not get a seat? They could run that short bit to their
homes.

Wolfgang felt how his heart thumped against his side--it had been
great fun to dance with Frida. He had swung her round several times in
the booth adjoining a restaurant, in which a man sat strumming on a
piano, and had done the same to a couple of other girls, who had looked
longingly at the boisterous dancer. What a pleasure it had been. He
still felt the effects of it, his chest rose and fell tumultuously--oh,
what a pleasure it was to swing a girl round in his arm like that.
Wonderful! Everything was wonderful.

Wolfgang trembled inwardly with untamed animal spirits, and
clenched his teeth so as not to draw people's attention to him by means
of a loud, triumphant shout. Oh, how splendid it would be, oh, how he
would love to do something foolish now. He thought it over: what on
earth could he do?

At that moment a cough disturbed him. How hollow it sounded--as if
everything inside were loose. The young fellow who was standing behind
his broad back might have been coughing like that for some time--only
he had not noticed it; now he felt disgusted at his spitting. He
stepped aside involuntarily: faugh, how the man coughed!

"Oh, how wretched it is that there isn't a cab to be had!" Wolfgang
now heard the older man say, on whose arm the young fellow who was
coughing was leaning. "Are you quite knocked up? Can you still stand
it?" There was such an anxiety expressed in that: "Can you still stand
it?"

"Oh, pretty well,"