"What?"
"That we would never see you again!"
He was somewhat moved and made no answer. The thought then ran through
his mind: Would it not have been more sensible...? He was sitting quite
close to Therese and felt the warmth of her body, as he had done before
in Lugano. In what dream of hers might she now be living--in the dark
jumbled dream of making humanity happy, or the light gay dream of a new
romantic adventure? She kept looking insistently out of the window. He
took her hand, without resistance, and put it to his lips.
She suddenly turned round to him and said innocently: "Yes, stop now.
I'd better get out here."
He let go her hand and looked at Therese.
"Yes, my dear George. What wouldn't one fall into," she said, "if one
didn't"--she gave an ironic smile--"have to sacrifice oneself for
humanity? Do you know what I often think?... Perhaps all this is only a
flight from myself."
"Why.... Why do you take to flight?"
"Goodbye, George."
The vehicle stopped. Therese got out, a young man stood still and
stared at her, she disappeared in the crowd. I don't think she'll
finish up on the scaffold, thought George. He drove to his hotel, had
his midday meal, lit a cigarette, changed his clothes and went to
Ehrenbergs'.
James, Sissy, Willy Eissler and Frau Oberberger were with the ladies
of the house in the dining-room taking black coffee. George sat down
between Else and Sissy, drank a glass of Benedictine and answered with
patience and good humour all the questions which his new activities had
provoked. They soon went into the drawing-room, and he now sat for a
time in the raised alcove with Frau Oberberger, who looked young again
to-day and was particularly anxious to hear more intimate details about
George's personal experiences in Detmold. She refused to believe him
when he denied having started intrigues with all the singers in the
place. Of course she simply regarded theatrical life as nothing but a
pretext and opportunity for romantic adventures. Anyway, she always
made a point of thinking she detected the most monstrous goings-on in
the _coulisses_ behind the curtain, in the dressing-rooms and in the
manager's office. When George had no option but to disillusion her, by
his report of the simple, respectable, almost philistine life of the
members of the opera, and by the description of his own hardworking
life, she visibly began to go to pieces, and soon he found himself
sitting opposite an aged woman, in whom he recognised the same person
as had appeared to him last summer, first in the box of a little
white-and-red theatre and later in a now almost forgotten dream. He
then went and stood with Sissy near the marble Isis, and each sought to
find in the eyes of the other during their harmless chatter a memory
of an ardent hour beneath the deep shade of a dark green park in the
afternoon. But to-day that memory seemed to them both to be plunged in
unfathomable depths.
Then he went and sat next to Else at the little table on which
books and photographs were lying. She first addressed to him some
conventional questions like all the rest. But suddenly she asked quite
unexpectedly and somewhat gently: "How is your child?"
"My child...." He hesitated. "Tell me, Else, why do you ask me...? Is
it simply curiosity?"
"You are making a mistake, George," she replied calmly and seriously.
"You usually make mistakes about me, as a matter of fact. You take me
for quite superficial, or God knows what. Well, there's no point in
talking about it any more. Anyway, my asking after the child is not
quite so incomprehensible. I should very much like to see it sometime."
"You would like to see it?" He was moved.
"Yes, I even had another idea.... But one which you will probably think
quite mad."
"Let's hear it, Else."
"I was thinking, you know, we might take it with us."
"Who, we?"
"James and I."
"To England?"
"Who's told you we're going to England? We are staying here. We've
already taken a place in 'Cottage'[3] outside. No one need know that it
is your child."
"What a romantic thought!"
"Good gracious, why romantic? Anna can't keep it with her, and you
certainly can't. Where could you put it during the rehearsals? In the
prompter's box, I suppose?"