‘Yes.’

There was a pause, when the evening seemed to rise in its silent, ringing pallor infinitely high, to the infinite which was near at hand.

‘WOHIN?’

That was the question—WOHIN? Whither? WOHIN? What a lovely word! She NEVER wanted it answered. Let it chime for ever.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, smiling at him.

He caught the smile from her.

‘One never does,’ he said.

‘One never does,’ she repeated.

There was a silence, wherein he ate biscuits rapidly, as a rabbit eats leaves.

‘But,’ he laughed, ‘where will you take a ticket to?’

‘Oh heaven!’ she cried. ‘One must take a ticket.’

Here was a blow. She saw herself at the wicket, at the railway station. Then a relieving thought came to her. She breathed freely.

‘But one needn’t go,’ she cried.

‘Certainly not,’ he said.

‘I mean one needn’t go where one’s ticket says.’

That struck him. One might take a ticket, so as not to travel to the destination it indicated. One might break off, and avoid the destination. A point located. That was an idea!

‘Then take a ticket to London,’ he said. ‘One should never go there.’

‘Right,’ she answered.

He poured a little coffee into a tin can.

‘You won’t tell me where you will go?’ he asked.

‘Really and truly,’ she said, ‘I don’t know. It depends which way the wind blows.’

He looked at her quizzically, then he pursed up his lips, like Zephyrus, blowing across the snow.

‘It goes towards Germany,’ he said.

‘I believe so,’ she laughed.

Suddenly, they were aware of a vague white figure near them. It was Gerald. Gudrun’s heart leapt in sudden terror, profound terror. She rose to her feet.

‘They told me where you were,’ came Gerald’s voice, like a judgment in the whitish air of twilight.

‘MARIA! You come like a ghost,’ exclaimed Loerke.

Gerald did not answer. His presence was unnatural and ghostly to them.

Loerke shook the flask—then he held it inverted over the snow. Only a few brown drops trickled out.

‘All gone!’ he said.

To Gerald, the smallish, odd figure of the German was distinct and objective, as if seen through field glasses. And he disliked the small figure exceedingly, he wanted it removed.

Then Loerke rattled the box which held the biscuits.

‘Biscuits there are still,’ he said.

And reaching from his seated posture in the sledge, he handed them to Gudrun. She fumbled, and took one. He would have held them to Gerald, but Gerald so definitely did not want to be offered a biscuit, that Loerke, rather vaguely, put the box aside. Then he took up the small bottle, and held it to the light.

‘Also there is some Schnapps,’ he said to himself.

Then suddenly, he elevated the battle gallantly in the air, a strange, grotesque figure leaning towards Gudrun, and said: