song."

The cry of life! Over this phrase Irene halted later on, but
briefly, touched as she had been by premature knowledge, its
meaning became clear to her straightway. The baron, small,
fragile, with a faded face and irregular, was a master in calling
forth the "cry of life" in women. His manner with them was
exquisite, but also insolent. In his gray eyes, with the reddened
edges of their lids, he had a look which was hypnotising in its
persistence and cold fire. It resembled the glitter of
steel--pale and penetrating. In the manner in which he held the
hand of a woman and placed a kiss on it, in the glances with
which he seemed to tear her away from her shelter, in the
intonation given to certain words, was attained the primitiveness
of desire and conquest under cover of polished refinement. Amid
the tedium and dissatisfaction of ordinary and exercised
lovemakers this method seemed cynical, but bold and honest. It
might have been compared to the shaggy head of a beast sticking
out of a basket of heliotropes, which have ever the character of
sameness as has their odor. The head is ugly, but smells of a
cave and of troglodytes, which among common flowers of dull odor
lend it the charm of power and originality.

Irene thought at once of "great grandfatherliness;" when in
presence of the baron her nerves quivered like chords when
touched in a manner unknown up to that time. She asked herself:
"Am I in love?" But when he had gone this question called from
her a brief, ironical smile. She analyzed and criticised the
physical and moral personality of the baron with perfect
coolness, and at moments with a shade of contempt even.

A vibrio! This expression contained the conception of physical
and moral withering, almost the palpable picture of an existence
which merely quivers in space, and is barely capable of living.
In comparison with this picture she had a presentiment of some
wholesome, noble, splendid strength. Disgust for the baron began
to flow around her heart and rise to her lips with a taste that
was repulsive, and to her brain with a thought that was bitter:
Why is this world as it is? Why is it not different? But perhaps
it was different somewhere else, but not for her? She had ceased
to believe in an idyl. She had looked too long, and from too near
a point, at the tragedy and irony of things to preserve faith in
idyls. Maybe there were idyls somewhere, but not in the sphere
where she lived--they were not