help you, still I wasn’t always there, and when I was there you were held captive by your dreams or by something more palpable, the landlady, say—in short there were times when you turned away from me, longed, poor child, for vague inexpressible things, and at those periods any passable man had only to come within your range of vision and you lost yourself to him, succumbing to the illusion that mere fancies of the moment, ghosts, old memories, things of the past and things receding ever more into the past, life that once been lived—that all this was your actual present-day life. A mistake, Frieda, nothing more than the last and, properly regarded, contemptible difficulties attendant on our final reconciliation. Come to yourself, gather yourself together; even if you thought that the assistants were sent by Klamm—it’s quite untrue, they come from Galater—and even if they did manage by the help of this illusion to charm you so completely that even in their disreputable tricks and their lewdness you thought you found traces of Klamm, just as one fancies one catches a glimpse of some precious stone that one has lost in a dung-heap, while in reality one wouldn’t be able to find it even if it were there—all the same they’re only hobbledehoys like the servants in the stall, except that they’re not healthy like them, and a little fresh air makes them ill and compels them to take to their beds, which I must say that they know how to snuffle out with a servant’s true cunning.” Frieda had let her head fall on K. ’s shoulder; their arms round each other, they walked silently up and down. “If we had only,” said Frieda after a while, slowly, quietly, almost serenely, as if she knew that only a quite short respite of peace on K. ’s shoulder were reserved for her, and she wanted to enjoy it to the utmost, “If we had only gone away somewhere at once that night, we might be in peace now, always together, your hand always near enough for mine to grasp; oh how much I need your companionship, how lost I have felt without it ever since I’ve known you, to have your company, believe me, is the only dream that I’ve had, that and nothing else.”
Then someone called from the side passage, it was Jeremiah, he was standing there on the lowest step, he was in his shirt, but had thrown a