ck of you dance
whenever I want to. Can't I, sweetheart? _Capito?_ _Comprenez-vous?_"

Eleanore looked into Alfons Diruf's smeary eyes with unspeakable
amazement.

Diruf got up, walked over to her, and put his arms around her shoulders.
"Well, if the boy is a sweet-toothed tom-cat who can easily be led
astray, you are a purring pussy-cat," he said with a tone of terrible
tenderness, and held the girl so tight in his arms that she could not
possibly move. "Now be quiet, sweetheart; be calm, my little bosom;
don't worry, you little devil!"

Horror, hot and cold, came over her, and filled her with unnamable
dismay. Contact with the man had a more gruesome effect on her than
anything she had ever even dreamed of. One jerk as though it were a
matter of life and death, and she was free. White as a sheet, she
nevertheless stood there before him, and smiled. It was a rare smile,
something quite beyond the bounds of what is ordinarily called a smile.
Alfons Diruf was no longer fat and fierce; he was like a pricked bubble;
he was done for. And finding himself alone, he stood there for a while
and gaped at the floor. He looked and felt hopelessly stupid.

Eleanore hastened through the streets, and suddenly discovered that she
was in the Long Row. She turned around. Benda, then on the way over to
call on Daniel, caught sight of her, recognised her by the light of the
gas lamp, stopped as she passed by him, and looked after her not a
little concerned.

When she reached home, she sank down on the sofa exhausted. To rid her
mind of the memory of the past hour, she took refuge in her longing,
longing for a southern country. Her longing was so intense, her desire
to go south so fervent, that her face shone as if in fever. But the
glass case had at last been broken.

The bell rang shortly before eight; she said to Gertrude: "If it is
Daniel, send him away. I cannot see any one this evening."

"Are you ill?" asked Gertrude with characteristic sternness.

"I don't know; I simply do not want to see anybody," said Eleanore, and
smiled again as she had smiled in Diruf's office.

It was Daniel, to be sure. Benda had told him that he had seen Eleanore
out in front of the house; and when he learned that she had not been to
call on Daniel, his anxiety increased. "There is something wrong here,"
he said, "you had better go see her." After they had talked the
situation over for a while Benda accompanied Daniel as far as AEgydius
Place, i