Macdonald sits there and coughs, a voiceless sort of cough, and keeps looking at the picture of her little son, on her table or in her hand. But she is at the last stage. If nobody else has engaged it, why⁠—but for the present it must be another one. Twenty-eight is free, so far as I know. I’ll go down to the office⁠—and to Behrens too. This is news. On the one hand it is bad news, on the other grand news⁠—and in any case a change. I’d like to wait for the ‘Comrade’ though, he’ll be coming along presently, and just ask him if he is still of the opinion, in a case like this, that the physical is to be regarded as secondary.”

He went to the office before tea. The room he had in mind, on the same corridor as his own, was free, and there would be a place for Frau Ziemssen. He hastened to Behrens, and found him in the “lab,” a cigar in one hand, and in the other a test-tube of dull-coloured fluid.

“Herr Hofrat, what do you think?” he began.