Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/281



I had finished the letter to Immanuel Hertz, I went out for a walk. With yesterday's rain a change in the weather had set in. Clouds drifted over the sky and a piercingly cold wind blew, as if it were November. I strolled about in the Villa-quarter, sauntering through the park—where the ridiculously dressed-up gigantic nurses promenaded with the perambulators—and roamed over the Grosser Garten, constantly looking up the roads and paths where we had walked together. At last I sat for a long time on the little hill at the Hercules Avenue. It was the hour of sunset, just like that evening a fortnight before; but all the fascination of the light was missing, and one saw nothing of the distant mountains of Saxon Switzerland. My head was heavy and incapable of thought; the sanguine feelings that had cheered me after the visit to the Hertzes had disappeared, without, however, allowing the previous melancholy tendencies, which considered everything as lost, to take their place. I was filled with a strange and dull restlessness.

When I went home I lay down on the uncomfortable sofa; so short was it that I had to place my legs over the one arm on to a dirty antimacassar. I did not light the lamp; a street-lamp threw enough light into the room to enable me to distinguish the objects, and to prevent me from being troubled by the darkness; I was neither tempted to sleep, nor in fact to do anything. As I lay in this con- 273