departed, leaving as a sort of echo an inward turbulence. He was too exhausted to decide whether the turbulence was emotional or physical.
He shivered. The draught from the window brought him out of his thoughts. He had a vague premonition of impending trouble, and felt he must find a pretext to go home.
Before he could close the window again, he was coughing. His cough was well enough known by this time, yet many eyes turned to him with quick sympathy and fear.
He had only one thought now—to control himself until he could get out of the room, away from everybody. He rose from his chair, and some one darted forward. Why should Karl look so panicky? Paul tried to deceive himself with the question, then gave it up. Self deception wouldn't work; he had tried it before. He sat down again, racked in a cough that was past controlling. He had once thought of buying a red handkerchief to carry against such emergencies. Had he done so, his acquaintances would merely have laughed at his conversion to Bolshevism. As it was—there would be a scene—and his speech would be forgotten in the light of this more impressive, useless phenomenon. His genius for anticlimax again.
Zurschmiede and Paddon got him to his attic room, and Bloch arrived shortly afterwards with a doctor.
The three young men took their leave. As Paddon opened the door some loose sheets of paper fluttered from a table. Believing them to be a copy of an essay which Paul had forgotten to return to him, he mechanically thrust the sheets into his pocket. Later in the evening, by the light of his own candle he read what seemed to be an entry destined for a diary:
"Rue N.D. des C., March 14, 1925. Since my soul insists, I give it up to a soft breeze which mysteriously
