The small, green-painted Uhlenhorst steamer lay alongside of the second landing-place.  Wilhelm stepped on board, and remained on deck, staring absently into the fog or at the dim outlines of the houses on the shore.  On the night of his escape from the Boulevard Pereire he had driven to the Gare du Nord, and taken a midnight train, which brought him at about six the next evening to Cologne.  He was dead with fatigue when he got there, stayed the night, and went on the following afternoon to Hamburg.  He had been there two days now, but had not been able till to-day to gather sufficient courage to go and see Paul.  Solitude had been an absolute necessity to him; he fancied that he who ran might read upon his brow the story of how he had lived and of what he had been guilty.  His thoughts were incessantly in Paris.  During the journey, in Cologne, since his arrival in Hamburg, he saw nothing but Pilar’s room, her return from the ball, and her passionate exhibition of grief during the hours and days that followed.  He only lived in these imaginings.  There seemed as yet no immediate connection between his natural surroundings and his mental life.  He felt as if a few steps would bring him again to Pilar’s side, and more than once the desire came over him to return to her, and lay himself at her feet, there to vegetate luxuriously henceforth, without a will or thought, to the end.  He resisted this impulse, but he was powerless against the tyranny of his imagination, which ceased not to call up before him the scenes that were being enacted in the house in Paris.

After a minute or two the boat started.  The shores receded and spread apart, and the lines of houses came and went like dissolving views upon a white wall.  The boat shot under the dark and clammy arch of the bridge, where the echo increased the splashing of the steamer waves and the thump of the machinery to a roar.  The noise subsided suddenly, as when a damper is laid over a resounding instrument; the steamer had passed the bridge, and floated out on to the broad waters of the Aussen Alster, which widened apparently into a great bay, the mist having wiped out the boundary lines between its oily surface and the flat shores which barely rose above it.  The boat described bold curves from side to side, touching at the different landing-places, and presently—­dimly at first and then more distinctly—­the square tower and ponderous, castle-like structure of the Fahrhaus Hotel came in sight.  The steamer had reached the furthest point of its journey.

Wilhelm found himself once more at the familiar spot which had so often been the goal of his short walks with Willy.  Scarcely ten months had elapsed since he had looked at it for the last time, but his morbid mental vision prolonged that time to an eternity.  He felt like the sultan of the Eastern legend, who fancied he had lived an entire lifetime, while, in reality, he sank for one moment into his bath in sight of his whole court.  He overcame a strange attack of shyness, and rang at the door in the Carlstrasse.  The liveried servant opened it, gave an exclamation of surprise, and hurried before him to the smoking room.  Wilhelm followed closely on his heels, and only left him time to open the door and call loudly into the room: