girl had a delicate, pale face and lean, very high
shoulders. And suddenly, close before him, there was a stumbling,
sliding, and falling ... The pale girl fell down. She fell so heavily
and violently that it almost looked dangerous, and her cavalier fell
with her. The latter must have hurt himself so painfully that he forgot
his partner altogether, for he began amid grimaces to rub his knees
with his hands, without getting off the floor; and the girl, seemingly
quite stunned by the fall, still lay on the floor. Now Tonio Kroeger
stepped forward, grasped her gently by the arms, and lifted her up.
Exhausted, confused, and unhappy, she looked up at him, and suddenly
her delicate face was suffused with a faint flush.

"Tak! O, mange Tak!" (Thanks, Oh, many thanks), she said, and looked up
at him with dark, swimming eyes.

"You should not dance any more," he said gently. Then he looked around
at _them_ once more, at Hans and Ingeborg, and went out, leaving the
verandah and the dance, and going up to his room.

He was intoxicated by the festivities in which he had had no part, and
weary with jealousy. It had been like long ago, just like long ago.
With heated face he had stood in a dark spot, full of grief on your
account, ye blond ones, happy and full of life, and then had gone away
lonely. Some one ought to come now. Ingeborg ought to come now, ought
to notice that he was gone, follow him secretly, lay her hand on his
shoulder and say: Come in and join us. Be happy! I love you ... But she
came not at all. Such things did not happen. Yes, it was just like
those days, and he was happy as in those days. For his heart was alive.
But what had there been during all the time in which he had become what
he now was?--Stupefaction; desolation; ice; and intellect. And art!...

He undressed, lay down to rest, and put out the light. He whispered two
names into the pillow, these few chaste Norse syllables which
designated for him the real and original type of his love, suffering,
and happiness, which meant life, simple and intimate emotion, home. He
looked back upon the years elapsed from that time to this. He thought
of the wild adventures his senses, nerves, and intellect had gone
through, saw himself devoured by irony and brilliance, made stagnant
and lame by knowledge, half worn out by the fevers and frosts of
creative work, unstable and in torments of conscience between crass
extremes, cast back and forth between sanctity and pa