But when they were crossing the silent market-place on which nobody was to be seen except the sentry on duty at military headquarters, when the empty place surrounded by the dark houses, in which scarcely a light was burning, lay before them like a crater of isolation, like a crater of silence out of which recurring waves of peace flowed over the sleeping town, then Heinrich Wendling took his wife’s arm, and at that first physical contact she closed her eyes. Perhaps he too had closed his eyes and saw neither the deep summer night nor the white ribbon of the road that stretched in front of them as they walked in its dust, perhaps each of them saw a different firmament…
