Then someone called from the side passage, it was Jeremiah, he was standing there on the lowest step, he was in his shirt, but had thrown a wrap of Frieda’s round him. As he stood there, his hair rumpled, his thin beard lank as if dripping with wet, his eyes painfully beseeching and wide with reproach, his sallow cheeks flushed, but yet flaccid, his naked legs trembling so violently with cold that the long fringes of the wrap quivered as well, he was like a patient who had escaped from hospital, and whose appearance could only suggest one thought, that of getting him back in bed again. This in fact was the effect that he had on Frieda, she disengaged herself from K., and was down beside Jeremiah in a second. Her nearness, the solicitude with which she drew the wrap closer round him, the haste with which she tried to force him back into the room, seemed to give him new strength, it was as if he only recognised K. now. “Ah, the Land Surveyor!” he said, stroking Frieda’s cheek to propitiate her, for she did not want to let him talk any further, “forgive the interruption. But I’m not at all well, that must be my excuse. I think I’m feverish, I must drink some tea and get a sweat. Those damned railings in the school garden, they’ll give me something to think about yet, and then, already chilled to the bone, I had to run about all night afterwards. One sacrifices one’s health for things not really worth it, without noticing it at the time. But you, Land Surveyor, mustn’t let yourself be disturbed by me, come into the room here with us, pay me a sick visit, and at the same time tell Frieda whatever you have still to say to her. When two who are accustomed to one another say goodbye, naturally they have a great deal to say to each other at the last minute which a third party, even if he’s lying in bed waiting for his tea to come, can’t possibly understand. But do come in, I’ll be perfectly quiet.” “That’s enough, enough!” said Frieda pulling at his arm. “He’s feverish and doesn’t know what he’s saying. But you, K., don’t you come in here, I beg you not to. It’s my room and Jeremiah’s, or rather it’s my room and mine alone, I forbid you to come in with us. You always persecute me, oh K., why do you always persecute me? Never, never will I go back to you, I shudder when I think of the very possibility. Go back to your girls; they sit beside you before the fire in nothing but their shifts, I’ve been told, and when anybody comes to fetch you they spit at him. You must feel at home there, since the place attracts you so much. I’ve always tried to keep you from going there, with little success, but all the same I’ve tried; all that’s past now, you are free. You’ve a lovely life in front of you; for the one you’ll perhaps have to squabble a little with the servants, but as for the other, there’s nobody in heaven or earth that will grudge you her. The union is blessed beforehand. Don’t deny it, I know you can disprove anything, but in the end nothing is disproved. Only think, Jeremiah, he has disproved everything!” They nodded with a smile of mutual understanding. “But,” Frieda went on, “even if everything were disproved, what would be gained by that, what would it matter to me? What happens in that house is purely their business and his business, not mine. Mine is to nurse you till you’re well again, as you were at one time, before K. tormented you for my
