the candles on the mantelpiece were lighted and their gleam fell through the balcony-door over the square, as it had done every evening since the house was built.

outside, the square shone with a thousand lights. there was a sound of carriages, but at a distance, for the house was thrust a long way back and its walls were as thick as the walls of a castle.

and, when time passed and night came, the noise died away and you could hear the rippling of the fountain, which never begins and never stops, and cries, no one knowing what they are, solitary steps that approach and retreat again.

[141]cordt stood by the fireplace of the empty room.

he stared at the places where the quaint old things had stood which had seen his race pass through the room.

he remembered every single piece that had been brought there and looked at the empty spot where each had stood. he closed his eyes and saw everything in its place again ... the spinet sang ... fru adelheid’s white train rustled over the carpet.

he thought of the man who had built the house and the room and who had called it the soul of the house and its tradition and its secret chamber. of all those after him who had brought their wives in here ... of the day when he himself stood in the room for the first time.

and he went and opened the secret recess in the wall which hid the old, yellow[142] document on which each of them who took possession of the room had written his name and his wife’s.

he read the report of the builder of the house, with its plain, homely phrases.

and, when he had read it and read it again, he struck out his own name and fru adelheid’s and went away and left the door open behind him.