The images of the morning returned dreamily; he saw the waves on the river and the low gables of Hradschin in the dim air, and heard the steam-whistle singing in the valley. Once a noise disturbed him and he realized that a woman was kneeling behind him, praying. She had entered quietly, before he turned around. Then he gave a start and examined her face carefully from over his shoulder.

Gradually he realized that he was looking for the nun with stars in her eyes. For no real reason he had christened her Regina, and he found that he now believed in this name. Their meeting under the acacias on the riverbank returned to his mind. And by a sudden and unaccountable connection he immediately began to think of Mylada. —

In these hours he reviewed the days in which Zdenka’s love had protected him. He experienced for a second time everything that had come before. Lazarus’s words returned to him, and cruel and useless tears reminded him of his child. Little by little he began to understand that the idyll of this summer was only a delusion. The sleepy lethargy of his heart had made him believe that solace and genuine happiness had come to reside within it. But the evil force continued to dwell there, growing rankly and eating at his soul like corrosive acid while he kissed his girl. Something had roused the flickering shadows he had fled from in the winter, and he recognized them again in the darkness of the empty church. He was not sure if it had been Regina or Mylada, and his memories of them became strangely interwoven in a single form. For him Susanna’s fate was a sign that his foot was treading a wretched and accursed path. Wherever it led, grief and ruin rose up behind him, and joy withered in his tracks. Concern for Zdenka clutched him, and he struggled futilely in its claws. Shuddering, he discovered a grim desire in his frightened love for her; he held her life in his hands and could destroy it.

When Severin stepped out of the church and back into the open air, he shook his head over these dreams. The midday sun flowed through the street like warm honey. A blind man stood by the wall blinking, his hat in his hand. Over the rooftops hung the exquisite shimmer of late summer, which rose from the fields of stubble beyond the city. Severin rubbed his fingers over his brow. He walked on uncertainly, and the pleasant numbness of the previous weeks relieved the tension within him. Now and then the warbling of a canary came from the open window of a ground-floor apartment, and a violin screeched from the third floor of a house. A humming came through the air from far off, a metallic ringing that grew stronger and stronger. In the towers the midday bells began to chime.

IV


Nathan Meyer loved to conceal his life from other people. Since opening the wine bar in the black lane with Karla, he had never been among his guests. He kept his room locked up, and lived there alone among the books and pamphlets that were strewn carelessly over the floor. He only went out at night, when the other people who lived in the building had gone to sleep and there was no chance of meeting anyone on the stairs.