But it doesn't get you anywhere, all the same.”

“No,” Törless said, looking out into the garden again. Behind his back-as though from a long way off-he heard the buzzing of the gas-lights. He was preoccupied by an emotion rising up in him, mournfully and like a mist.

“It doesn't get you anywhere. You're right about that. But it doesn't do to tell yourself that. How much of all the things we spend our whole time in school doing is really going to get anyone anywhere? What do we get anything out of? I mean for ourselves-you see what I mean? In the evening you know you've lived another day, you've learnt this and that, you've kept up with the time-table, hut still, you're empty-inwardly, I mean. Right inside, you're still hungry, so to speak. .

Beineberg muttered something about exercising the mind by way of preparation-not yet being able to start on anything-later on...

“Preparation? Exercise? What for? Have you got any definite idea of it? I dare say you're hoping for something, but it's just as vague to you as it is to me. It's like this: everlastingly waiting for something you don't know anything about except that you're waiting for it. . . . It's so boring.

“Boring. . .” Beineberg drawled in mimicry, wagging his head.

Törless was still gazing out into the garden. He thought he could hear the rustling of the withered leaves being blown into drifts by the wind. Then came that moment of utter stillness which always

occurs a little while before the descent of complete darkness. The shapes of things, which had been sinking ever more deeply into the dusk, and the blurring, dissolving colours of things-for an instant it all seemed to pause, to hover, as it were with a holding of the breath ...

“You know, Beineberg,” Törless said, without turning round, '~when it's getting dark there always seem to be a few moments that are sort of different. Every time I watch it happening I remember the same thing: once when I was quite small I was playing in the woods at this time of evening. My nursemaid had wandered off somewhere. I didn't know she had, and so I still felt as if she were nearby. Suddenly something made me look up. I could feel I was alone. It was suddenly all so quiet. And when I looked around it was as though the trees were standing in a circle round me, all silent, and looking at me. I began to cry. I felt the grownups had deserted me and abandoned me to inanimate beings.... What is it? I still often get it. What's this sudden silence that's like a language we can't hear?”

“I don't know the thing you mean. But why shouldn't things have a language of their own? After all, there are no definite grounds for asserting that they haven't a soul!”

Törless did not answer.