ntality. She often fell in dancing; but she
came to him when it was ladies' choice, she knew that he wrote verses,
twice she had asked him to show them to her, and often she looked at
him from a distance with lowered head. But what good was that to him?
As for him, he loved Inga Holm, the fair-haired merry Inga, who
undoubtedly despised him because he wrote poetic things ... he looked
at her, saw her elongated blue eyes full of happiness and mockery, and
an envious longing, a bitter, harassing pain at being cut off from her
and eternally foreign to her, dwelt in his breast and burned there ...

"First couple _en avant!_" said M. Knaak, and no words can describe how
wonderfully the man brought out the nasal sound. They were practising
the quadrille, and to Tonio Kroeger's intense terror he found himself in
the same set with Inga Holm. He avoided her when he could, and still he
kept getting near her; he forbade his eyes to approach her, and still
his glance was forever striking her ... Now she came gliding and
running up hand in hand with red-headed Ferdinand Matthiessen, threw
back her braid, and placed herself opposite him, breathing deeply; Mr.
Heinzelmann the pianist ran his bony fingers over the keys, M. Knaak
called out the figures, and the quadrille began.

She moved back and forth before him, forward and back, gliding and
turning: a fragrance that came from her hair or the dainty white stuff
of her dress reached him now and then, and his eyes grew sadder and
sadder. "I love you, dear, sweet Inga," he was saying to himself; and
he put into these words all the pain he felt that she was so merry and
so intent on the dancing, and paid no heed to him. A wonderful poem by
Storm came to his mind: "I fain would sleep, but thou must dance." He
was tormented by the humiliating contradiction that lay in having to
dance while he was in love ...

"First couple _en avant!_" said M. Knaak, for a new figure was
beginning. "_Compliment! Moulinet des dames! Tour de main!_" And no one
can describe in what a graceful manner he swallowed the silent _e_ in
_de_.

"Second couple _en avant!_" Tonio Kroeger and his lady were the ones.
"_Compliment!_" And Tonio Kroeger bowed. "_Moulinet des dames!_" And
Tonio Kroeger, with lowered head and gloomy brow, laid his hand on the
hands of the four ladies, on that of Inga Holm, and danced
"_moulinet_."

All around there arose a giggling and laughing. M. Knaak assumed a
ballet pose which expr