He laughed as if mad, and his face, with his spotted teeth, was turned toward her. She took him by the arm, and implored him to straighten up.
He pressed her hand to his forehead, and said: "The letter, Eleanore, the letter ...!"
"Now you see, Daniel, I knew it all along. What was in the letter?"
"I dare not tell you, otherwise my sweet over-tone will take a somersault, become mingled with the gloomy bass, and be lost forever."
Eleanore looked at him in amazement; he had never seemed so much like a fool to her in her life.
"Listen," he said, putting his arm in hers, "I have composed a song; here is the way it goes." He sang a melody he had written for one of Eichendorff's poems. In it there was a tender sadness. "While everything is still and everybody asleep, my soul greets the eternal light, and rests like a ship in the harbour."
They had again reached the front door; they had been strolling back and forth for two hours.
He had an unpleasant feeling when he went up the steps of his apartment.
Gertrude was sitting where he had left her: by the clothes press. She had wrapped his top coat about her legs, her back was leaning against the wall, her head had sunk on her shoulder; she was asleep. She was not awakened by his coming. Beside her stood the candle, now burned down to the edge of the metal holder; it was spluttering. The light from it fell on Gertrude's face, lighting it up irregularly and lending it a painful expression.
"In the presence of God my wife," murmured Daniel. He did not waken Gertrude until the candle had gone out. Then he did; she got up, and the two went off in darkness to their bed room.
Daniel wished to see Eleanore skate; he went out to the Maxfeld at a time he knew she would be there.
He saw her quite soon, and was delighted when she glided by; but when she was lost in the crowd, he frowned. High school boys followed her with cowardly and obtrusive forwardness. One student, who wore a red cap, fell flat on his stomach as he bowed to her.
She ran into two army officers, or they into her; this put an end for the time being to the inspired grace of her movement. When she started off a second time, drawing a beautiful circle, she saw Daniel and came over to him. She smiled in a confidential way, chatted with him, glided backwards in a circle about him, laughed at his impatience because she would not stand still, threw her muff over to him, asked him to throw it back, and, with arms raised to catch it, cut an artistic figure on the ice.