It must be said that Hans Castorp’s sentiments toward the patient of the “good” Russian table had made distinct progress during his retirement. The sympathy he entertained in his mind and his simple heart for this medium-sized person with the gliding gait and the “Kirghiz” eyes, as good as amounted to being “in love”⁠—we shall let the word stand, although in strictness it is a conception of “down below,” a word of the plains, capable of giving rise to a misconception: namely, that the tender ditty beginning “One word from thy sweet lips” was to some extent applicable to his state. Her picture had hovered before him in those early hours when he had lain awake and watched the dawn unveil his chamber; or at evening when the twilight thickened. It had been vividly present the night Settembrini had suddenly entered his room and turned on the light; was the reason why he had coloured under the humanistic eye. In each hour of his diminished day he had thought of her: her mouth, her cheekbones, her eyes, whose colour, shape, and position bit into his very soul; her drooping back, the posture of her head, her cervical vertebra above the rounding of her blouse, her arms enhanced by their thin gauze covering.