Just as I am about to enter a timid voice calls me--"Simon!" It is Antonia.

So much the worse for her.

I hurry in, followed by the weak appeal.
I go up to my room.

It is bare and always cold; always I must shiver some minutes before I shake it back to life.

As I close the shutters I see the street again; the massive, slanting blackness of the roofs and their population of chimneys clear-cut against the minor blackness of space; some still waking, milk-white windows; and, at the end of a jagged and gloomy background, the blood-red stumbling apparition of the mad blacksmith.