His nature would probably have sought to fill up the wide, shallow gap left by Ernst and earlier ties either by another Ernst or, more likely, a variety of matter. It would have been only a temporary stopping. Now a gold crown, regal person, had fallen on the hollow.

But his nature was an effete machine and incapable of working on all that glory. Desperate at dullness, he betook himself to self-lashings. He would respond to utmost of weakened ability; with certainty of failure, egotistically, but not at a standstill. Kreisler[99] was a German who, by all rights and rules of the national temperament, should have committed suicide some weeks earlier. Anastasya became an idée fixe. He was a machine, dead weight of old iron, that, started, must go dashing on. His little-dog simile was veritably carried out in his scourings of the neighbourhood, in hope of crossing Anastasya. But these “courses” gave no result. Benignant apparition, his roughness had scared it away, and off the earth, for ever. He entered, even infested, all painting schools of the quarter. He rapidly pursued distant equivocal figures in streets and gardens. Each rendered up its little quota of malignant hope, then presented him with a face of monotonous strangeness.

It was Saturday when Kreisler was found preparing to take his valise to the Mont de Piété. On the preceding evening he had paid one of his unaccountable calls on Fr?ulein Lipmann, the first for some time. He had a good reason for once. This salon was the only place of comparatively public assembly in the quarter he had not visited. Entering with his usual slight air of mystification, he bent to kiss Fr?ulein Lipmann’s hand in a vaguely significant fashion.

The blank reciprocal indifference of these calls was thus relieved. It awoke a vague curiosity on one side, a little playful satisfaction on the other. This might even have ripened into a sort of understanding and bonhomie. He did not pursue it or de............