I found Minna waiting for me in the little sitting-room of the hotel. She poured out the coffee from a tarnished pot, and we sat down at the table just like a newly married couple, as if, indeed, the bowl of honey on the tray was a symbol of honeymoon days. The room was rather gloomy, for the mist, like a blind, obscured the windows. The unusually early hour at which I had been obliged to rise affected my head, and also made me feel rather nervous.
As we stepped outside we could not see the church, and the houses on the other side of the square appeared but dimly, as an indistinct mass. The pavement was greasy; Minna slipped and took my arm. Two street-sweepers moved grotesquely in the milk-white atmosphere. Under the barber's signboard, which seemed to be a free floating moon, a glass door clinked, and was opened with a kick. Near the grocer's, at the corner, a variously mingled and rather spicy smell impregnated the air for a certain distance; we suddenly stepped into it, and just as suddenly out of it.
We arrived in good time for the steam launch.
Hardly had it left the bridge before the bank had disappeared, and we might easily have imagined ourselves at sea. We only saw the little waves shining like scales close to us, with the mist passing over them like steam. The sooty coal-smoke from the funnel struck down over
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