K. could not hear properly, his attention was distracted by the rattling of glass. He immediately discovered the cause of the disturbance. The assistants were standing outside in the yard hopping from one foot to the other in the snow, behaving as if they were glad to see him again; in their joy they pointed each other out to him and kept tapping all the time on the kitchen window. At a threatening gesture from K. they stopped at once, tried to pull one another away, but the one would slip immediately from the grasp of the other and soon they were both back at the window again. K. hurried into the annex where the assistants could not see him from outside and he would not have to see them. But the soft and as it were beseeching tapping on the windowpane followed him there too for a long time.

“The assistants again,” he said apologetically to the landlady and pointed outside. But she paid no attention to him, she had taken the portrait from him, looked at it, smoothed it out and pushed it again under her pillow. Her movements had become slower, but not with weariness, but with the burden of memory. She had wanted to tell K. the story of her life and had forgotten about him in thinking of the story itself. She was playing with the fringe of her wrap. A little time went by before she looked up, passed her hand over her eyes, and said: “This wrap was given me by Klamm. And the nightcap, too. The portrait, the wrap and the nightcap, these are the only three things of his I have as keepsakes. I’m not young like Frieda, I’m not so ambitious as she is, nor so sensitive either, she’s very sensitive; to put it bluntly, I know how to accommodate myself to life, but one thing I must admit, I couldn’t have held out so long here without these three keepsakes. Perhaps these three things seem very trifling to you, but let me tell you, Frieda, who has had relations with Klamm for a long time, doesn’t possess a single keepsake from him. I have asked her, she’s too fanciful, and too difficult to please besides; I,