As they walked home together, Miss Jensen returned once more to the
subject of Krafft's failings.

"I've known many men," she said, "one more credulously vain and stupid
than another; for unless a man is engaged in satisfying his brute
instincts, he can be twisted round the finger of ANY woman. But Mr.
Krafft was the only one I've met, who didn't appear to me to have a
single good impulse."

The big woman's high-pitched voice grated on Madeleine.

"You're quite wrong there," she said more snappily than before. "Heinz
had as many good impulses as anyone else. But he had reduced the
concealing of them to a fine art. He was never happier than when he had
succeeded in giving a totally false impression of himself. Take me for
this, for that!--just what I choose. Often it was as if he flung a bone
to a dog: there! that's good enough for you. No one knew Heinz: each of
us knew a little bit of him, and thought it was all there was to
know.--He never showed a good impulse: that is as much as saying that
he swarmed with them. And no doubt he would have considered that, with
regard to you, he had been entirely successful. You have the idea of
him he meant you to have."

"He was never her lover," said Louise with a studied carelessness.

Maurice, to whom nothing was more offensive than the tone of bravado in
which she flaunted subjects of this nature, was stung to retaliation.

"How do YOU know?"

"Well, if you wish to hear--from his own lips."

"Do you mean to say you've spoken to Heinz about things of that
kind?--discussed his relations with other women?"

"Do you need reminding that I knew Heinz before I had ever heard of
you?"

He turned away, too dispirited to cross words with her. The events of
the past week had closed over his head as two waves Close over a
swimmer, cutting off light and air. Since the night on which he had
left his whilom friend the mark of his spread fingers as a parting
gift, he had ceased to care greatly about anything.

Compared with his pessimistic absorption in himself, Avery's suicide
and Krafft's departure touched him lightly. For the girl, he had never
cared. As soon, though, as he heard that Krafft had disappeared, he
turned out his pockets for the scrap of paper Heinz had given him that
evening in the cafe. But it threw no light on what had happened. It was
merely an address, and, twist it as he would, Maurice could make no
more of it than the words: KLOSTERGASSE 12. He resolved to g