The portmanteau fell under the bed; he crushed into the red bulbous cover. Kreisler never sat on his bed except when going to get into it. For another man it would have replaced the absent armchair. In those moments of depression in which he did so he always, at once, felt more depressed, or quite hopeless. Head between hands, he now stared at the floor. Four or five hours! He must raise money, else he could not go to the dance. How absurd, this fuss about such a sum! All the same, how the devil could he get it?

“Small as it is, I shan’t get it,” he thought to himself. He began repeating this stupidly, and stuck at word “shan’t.” His brain and mouth clogged up, he stuttered thickly in his mind. He sprang up. But the slovenly, hopeless quality of the bed clung to him. This was a frivolous demonstration. He wandered to the window; stood staring out, nose flattened against the pane.

The sudden quiet and idleness of his personality was an awakening after the little nightmare of Suzanne. But it was not a refreshing one.

His portmanteau had always received certain consideration, as being, next the dress-suit, the most dependable article among those beneath his sway—to come to his aid if their common existence were threatened. He had now thrown it under the bed with disgust. He and all his goods were rubbish for the streets.

He sauntered from the window to the bed and back. Whenever he liked, in a sense, he would open the door and go out; but still, until then (and when would he “like”?) he was a poor prisoner. Outside, he took some strength and importance from others. In here he touched bottom and realized what the Kreisler-self was, with four walls round it.

His muscles were still full. They symbolized his uselessness. The thought, so harsh and tyrannical,[104] of his once more going to the window and gazing down at the street beneath made him draw back his chair. He sat midway in the room, looking steadily out at the housetops. But, like his vigorous muscles and his deadness, there was the same contradiction; his mechanical obstinacy as regards Anastasya and his comic activity at present to get to a dance.

Comrades at painting school, nodding acquaintances, etc., were once more run through. None valued his acquaintance at more than thirty centimes, if that.

Perhaps Anastasya had left Paris? This solution, occurring sometimes, had only made his activity during the last few days more mad and mechanical—the pursuit of a shadow.

Ten minutes later, through a series of difficult clockwork-like actions, he had got once more to Lejeune’s to have lunch. With disgust he took what had been his usual seat latterly, at the table in the recess; the one place, he was sure, Anastasya would never be found in again, wherever else she might be found.

Lunch nearly over, he caught sight of Lowndes. “Hi, Master Lowndes!” he called out—always assuming great bluffness and brutality, as he called it, with English people, and laborious opposite to “stiffness.” “How do you do?”

The moment his eye had fallen on “Master” Lowndes this friend’s probable national opulence had occurred to him as a tantalizing fact. No gross decision could be come to in that moment. Lowndes was called to be kept there a little bit, while he turned things over and made up his mind. This was an acquaintance existing chiefly on chaff and national antithesis. It meant nothing to him. What matter if he were refused? Lowndes not being a compatriot made it easier. Something must be sacrificed. Lowndes’ acquaintanceship was a possession something equivalent to a cheap ring, a souvenir. He must part with it, if necessary.

Lowndes grinned at sight of Kreisler. He had finished his own lunch and was just going off. He had almost forgotten his idea in coming to the[105] restaurant, that of seeing his German acquaintance. Swaying from side to side on his two superlatively elastic calves, he sat down opposite the good Otto, who leered back, blinking. He spoke German better than Kreisler any other language, so they used that, after a little flourish of English.

“Well, what have you been doing? Working?”

“No,” replied Kreisler. “I’m giving up painting and becoming a business man. My father has offered me a position!”

This subject seemed no more important than his speech made it, and yet it filled his life. Lowndes smiled correctly, not suspecting realities.

“Have you seen Douglas?” This was a friend through whom they had known each other in Italy.

Why should this fellow lend him thirty francs? The grin would not be there, he felt, had he been conscious that the other was thinking of the contents of his pocket. Not humour, but a much colder stuff no doubt mounted guard over his pocket-book, guarantee of this easiness and health. Oh, the offensive prosperity of the English, smugness of middle-class affluence! etc. etc.

Kreisler imagined the change that would come over this face when there was question of thirty francs. Estrangement set in on his side already, anger and humiliation at the imagined expression. This was of help. Here was his chance of borrowing that very insignificant but illusive sum. The man was already an enemy. He would willingly have knocked him on the head and taken his money had they been in a quiet place.

The complacent health and humoristic phlegm with which he grinned and perambulated through life charged Kreisler with the contempt natural to his more stiff and human education. His relations with him hinging on mild racial differences, he saw behind him the long line of all the Englishmen he had ever known. “Useless swine,” he thought, “so pleased with his cursed English face, and mean as a peasant!”

“Oh, I was asked for my opinion on a certain[106] matter this morning. I was asked what I thought of German women!”

“What reply did you make, Mr. Lowndes?”

“I didn’t know what to say. I suggested that my friend should come along and get your opinion.”

“My opinion as an expert? My fees as an expert are heavy. I charge thirty francs a consultation!”

“I’m sure he’d have paid that,” Lowndes laughed innocently. Kreisler surveyed him unsympathetically.

“What, then, is your opinion of our excellent females?” he asked.

“Oh, I have no opinion. I admire your ladies, especially the pure Prussians.”

Kreisler was thinking: “If I borrow the money, there must be some time mentioned for paying back—next week, say. He would be more likely to lend it if he knew where to find me. He must have my address.”

“Come and see me—some time,” he blinked. “52 Boulevard Pfeiffer, fourth floor, just beside the restaurant here. You see? Up there.”

“I will. I looked you up at your old address a month or so ago; they didn’t know where you’d gone.”

Kreisler stared fixedly at him—a way of covering discomfiture felt at this news. The old address reminded him of several little debts there. For this reason he had not told them where he was going. The concierge would complain of her old tenant; probably, even, Lowndes might have been shown derelict tradesmen’s bills. Not much encouragement for his proposed victim!

Lowndes was writing on a piece of paper.

“There’s my address: Rue des Flammes.”

Kreisler looked at it rather fussily and said over: “5 Rue des Flammes. Lowndes.” He hesitated and repeated the name.

“R. W.—Robert Wooton. Here, I’ll write it down for you.”

“Are you in a hurry? Come and have a drink[107] at the Berne,” Kreisler suggested when he had made up his bill.

On the way Lowndes continued a discourse.

“A novelist I knew told me he changed the names of the characters in a book several times in the course of writing it. It freshened them up, according to him. He said that the majority of people were killed by their names. I think a name is a man’s soul.”

Kreisler forged ahead, rhythmically and sullenly.

“If we had numbers, for instance, instead of names, who would take the number thirteen?” Lowndes wondered in German.

“I,” said Kreisler.

“Would you?”

Every minute Kreisler delayed increased the difficulty. His energy was giving out. They were now sitting on the terrasse at the Berne. He had developed a particular antipathy to borrowing. An immense personal neurasthenia had grown up round this habit of his, owing to his late discomfitures. He already heard an awkward voice, saw awkward eyes. Then he suddenly concluded that the fact that Lowndes was not a............