When it was broken, there was no shattering of it:  it simply died away like a long-drawn chord as Mrs. Falbe closed her book.

“She died,” she said, “I knew she would.”

Hermann gave a great shout of laughter.

“Darling mother, I’m ever so much obliged,” he said.  “We had to return to earth somehow.  Where has everybody else been?”

Michael stirred in his chair.

“I’ve been here,” he said.

“How dull!  Oh, I suppose that’s not polite to Sylvia.  I’ve been in Leipzig and in Frankfort and in Munich.  You and Sylvia have been there, too, I may tell you.  But I’ve also been here:  it’s jolly here.”

His sentimentalism had apparently not quite passed from him.

“Ah, we’ve stolen this hour!” he said.  “We’ve taken it out of the hurly-burly and had it to ourselves.  It’s been ripping.  But I’m back from the rim of the world.  Oh, I’ve been there, too, and looked out over the immortal sea.  Lieber Gott, what a sea, where we all come from, and where we all go to!  We’re just playing on the sand where the waves have cast us up for one little hour.  Oh, the pleasant warm sand and the play!  How I love it.”

He got out of his chair stretching himself, as Mrs. Falbe passed into the house, and gave a hand on each side to Michael and Sylvia.

“Ah, it was a good thing I just caught that train at Victoria nearly a year ago,” he said.  “If I had been five seconds later, I should have missed it, and so I should have missed my friend, and Sylvia would have missed hers, and Mike would have missed his.  As it is, here we all are.  Behold the last remnant of my German sentimentality evaporates, but I am filled with a German desire for beer.  Let us come into the studio, liebe Kinder, and have beer and music and laughter.  We cannot recapture this hour or prolong it.  But it was good, oh, so good!  I thank God for this hour.”

Sylvia put her hand on her brother’s arm, looking at him with just a shade of anxiety.

“Nothing wrong, Hermann?” she asked.

“Wrong?  There is nothing wrong unless it is wrong to be happy.  But we have to go forward:  my only quarrel with life is that.  I would stop it now if I could, so that time should not run on, and we should stay just as we are.  Ah, what does the future hold?  I am glad I do not know.”

Sylvia laughed.

“The immediate future holds beer apparently,” she said.  “It also hold a great deal of work for you and me, if it is to hold Leipzig and Frankfort and Munich.  Oh, Hermann, what glorious days!”

They walked together into the studio, and as they entered Hermann looked back over her into the dim garden.  Then he pulled down the blind with a rattle.

“‘Move on there!’ said the policeman,” he remarked.  “And so they moved on.”