A long spell of rain turned at length into flurries of fresh snow. Fingers were stiff in the loggia, both camel’s-hair rugs were called into service, it did not lack much of putting the fur sleeping-sack in requisition anew; the management brought itself to turn on the heat, and on all hands were heard bitter complainings⁠—the spring had betrayed them. Toward the end of the month the valley lay deep in snow; but then it thawed, just as certain experienced or weather-sensitive among the guests had prophesied it would: Frau Stöhr, the ivory Levi, but equally the Widow Hessenfeld, smelt and felt it simultaneously, before ever the smallest little cloud showed itself over the top of the granite formation to the south. Frau Hessenfeld got colic, Fräulein Levi became bedridden, and Frau Stöhr, drawing back her lips from her ratlike teeth with the churlish expression she had, daily and hourly gave utterance to her superstitious fear of a haemorrhage⁠—for it was common talk that the thaw brought them about, or at least favoured them. It became unbelievably warm. The heat was turned off, balcony doors were left open all night, and still it was over fifty degrees in the morning. The snow melted apace, it turned grey, became porous and saturated; the drifts shrank together, and seemed to sink into the earth.