"You loved everything so," Kurz went on. "At night when we talked it was you who believed in what you said. It was you who saw so clearly how well all things of life were meant. It was always I who questioned."
"But, I say, old Otto, your mind was so quick; so brilliant. You could pick flaws where I never knew they existed."
"It was you who had so much of faith, Charlie."
"How we did talk;" he said it to himself. "Talk and talk until old Mutter Schwegel, who was so keen for us, grew tired of listening and came and turned out the lamp."
"And how you spoke ever of your beliefs," Kurz's voice was hoarse. "It was so easy for you to know. You never questioned. You believed. It ended there, with your belief. You were so near to what you thought. It was a part of you. I--I stood away from all things and from myself. I would tell you that the mind should reason. I stayed outside with my criticism, while you--ach, Charlie!--How you did know!"
"But now, I do not laugh!" Kurz protested with wearied eagerness. "Now I come to you. I ask you if you know those things--now?"
"The things of life. The things of death."
"I know what I always knew," he said slowly. "I know that life is meant to live fully and understandingly and that death is meant to live on; fully and understandingly."
The dense, opaque shadows pressing down on the garden. The shadows hanging loose and thick on the high, boxwood hedges. The dark, smooth, night sky.
And suddenly a faint tremor ran through him from head to foot. He pressed his face close to the glass. His hands went up screening a small space for his eyes.
In the still block of shadows, in the black mass of them, he had seen something; something had moved against the quiet clumping shadows.
"I say," he whispered. "There's some one coming up through the garden."
Once he looked at Kurz huddled in the armchair; his face white and drawn; his eyes staring before him.
He thought he heard footsteps coming softly up the stairs; footsteps that came lightly and hesitated and then came on again.
"Charlie--!" Kurz stammered. "Charlie--!"
He felt that some one was standing in the open doorway.
His eyes took in the well known figure. The sweet face with its red cheeks and its framing white hair. The short body. The blue eyes that were fixed on him.