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o’clock free period—I was purposely late, all alone and without a thought for anything in the world but Meta, knowing I’d be punished and not caring—there she was, coming toward me, near the round wall. She was arm in arm with a girl friend. Suddenly I couldn’t help thinking how it would be if she were arm in arm with me instead of that silly goose. She was so close to me my head began to swim and I had to stop awhile and lean against the wall. When I finally got back, the gate was closed tight; I had to ring and they gave me an hour’s detention.”
    Burkhardt smiled and remembered how at several of their rare meetings they had reminisced about Meta. As boys they had gone to the greatest lengths to conceal their love from each other, and it was only years later that they had occasionally lifted the veil and exchanged their little experiences. Yet even today neither of them had told the whole story. Otto Burkhardt recalled how for months he had kept and worshipped one of Meta’s gloves, which he had found or actually stolen, an episode still unknown to his friend. He considered unburdening himself of the story now, but in the end he smiled slyly and said nothing, taking pleasure in keeping this last little memory to himself.

Chapter Three
    B URKHARDT WAS SITTING COMFORTABLY leaning back in a wicker chair, his large panama hat on the back of his head, reading a magazine and smoking in the sun-splattered arbor at the west side of the studio; nearby sat Veraguth on a little camp chair, with his easel in front of him. The figure of the reading man was sketched in, the large color masses were in place, now he was working on the face, and the whole picture exulted in bright, weightless, sun-saturated, yet moderate tones. The air was spiced with oil paint and cigar smoke, birds hidden in the foliage uttered their thin, muffled, noonday cries and sang in sleepy dreamy conversational tones. Pierre was on the ground, huddled over a large map, describing thoughtful journeys with his frail forefinger.
    â€œDon’t fall asleep!” shouted the painter.
    Burkhardt blinked at him, smiled, and shook his head. “Where are you now, Pierre?” he asked the boy.
    â€œWait, I’ve got to read it,” Pierre answered eagerly, and spelled out a name on his map. “In Lu—Luce—in Lucerne. There’s a lake or an ocean. Is it bigger than our lake, Uncle Burkhardt?”
    â€œMuch bigger. Twenty times bigger. You must go there some day.”
    â€œOh, yes. When I have a car, I’ll go to Vienna and Lucerne and the North Sea and India, where your house is. But will you be at home?”
    â€œCertainly, Pierre. I’m always at home when guests come. Then we’ll go and see my monkey, his name is Pendek, he has no tail but he has snow-white side whiskers, and then we’ll take guns and go out on the river in a boat and shoot a crocodile.”
    Pierre’s slender torso rocked back and forth with pleasure. Uncle Burkhardt went on talking about his plantation in the Malayan jungle, and he spoke so delightfully and so long that in the end the boy wearied, was unable to follow, and absently resumed his journey over the map, but his father listened all the more attentively to his friend, who spoke with an air of indolent well-being of working and hunting, of excursions on horseback and in boats, of lovely weightless villages built of bamboo, of monkeys, herons, eagles, and butterflies, offering such seductive glimpses of his quiet, secluded life in the tropical forest that the painter had the impression of peering through a slit into a radiant, multicolored paradise. He heard of great silent rivers in the jungle, of wildernesses full of tree-high ferns, of broad plains where the lalang grass stood as high as a man; he heard of colored evenings on the seashore facing coral islands and blue volcanoes, of wild raging cloudbursts and flaming storms, of dreamy meditative