Kreisler, on his side, had been only a few paces from his door when he caught sight of Bertha. As his changed route would necessitate a good deal of tiresome circling to bring him back practically to the spot he had started from, he right-about-faced in a minute or two, the danger past, as he thought. The result was that, as she left the shop, there was Kreisler approaching again, almost in the same place as before.
 
She was greeted affably, as though to say “Caught! both of us!” He was under the impression, however, that she had lain in wait for him. He was so accustomed to think of her in that character! If she had been in full flight he would have imagined that she was only decoying him. She was a woman who could not help adhering.

“How do you do? I’ve just been buying my lunch.”

“So late?”

“I thought you’d left Paris!” She had no information of this sort, but was inclined to rebuke him for not leaving Paris.

“I? Who told you that, I should like to know. I shall never leave Paris; at least?”

There was heavy enigmatic meaning in this, said lightly. It did not escape her, sensible to such nuances.

“How are our fair friends?” he asked.

“Our? Oh, Fr?ulein Lipmann and—Oh, I haven’t seen them since the other night.”

“Indeed! Not since the other night??”

She made her silence swarm with significant meanings, like a glassy shoal with innumerable fish: her eyes even, stared and darted about, glassily.

It was very difficult, now she had stopped, to get away. The part she had more or less played with her friends, of his champion, had imposed itself on her. She could not leave her protégé without something further said. She was flattered, too, at his showing no signs now of desire to escape.

His more plainly brutal instincts woke readily in these vague days. Various appetites had been asserting themselves. So the fact that she was a pretty girl did its work on a rather recalcitrant subject. He felt so modest now, ideals things of the past. Surely for a quiet ordinary existence pleasant little distinctions were suitable?

Without any anxiety about it, he began to talk to Bertha with the idea of a subsequent meeting. He had wished to avoid her because she had embodied[168] for him the evening of the dance, and appeared to him in its disquieting colours. What he sought unconsciously now was a certain quietude, enlivened by healthy appetites. He had disconnected her with his great Night.

“I was cracked the other night. I’m not often in that state,” he said. Bertha’s innuendoes had to be recognized.

“I’m glad of that,” she answered.

As to Bertha, to have been kissed and those things, under however eccentric circumstances, gave a man certain rights on your interest.

“I’m afraid I was rather rud............