“I do not love him!” hastily asseverated the Countess, pursuing the mental image she had conjured up. “But yet he is great, superhuman. He is a world in himself. In the midst of this tame and quiet existence he is as a jungle and primeval forest. It seems to me as if he must have both the tiger and the serpent within him, as well as all that is boldest in Nature, its gigantic trees, its wild and impenetrable forests. Do you know, one can creep within them, never coming to an end, and yet be in him!” She broke off suddenly. She dared not put into words the fancies evoked within her. For the husband whose eccentricities she tolerated was no more to her than a brother--nay, a father. They were bound together by one voluptuous hour of which no human being knew or even suspected. It was such an hour as that in which two human personalities melted into one to create a new being that later on might emerge and begin a life bound by invisible ties to that mysterious hour. The threads might be torn from their place, snapped, distorted, yet they remained entwined. No other desire now possessed her than to yield her senses once more unrestrainedly to that consciousness of the depths of her being which enfolded her as in a dream, and which she nevertheless continually thrust aside. The two women sat close together, the Countess on the ground. Both seemed alike to be struck down by an invisible and imperious fist, striking at these centres of abandonment and yearning and self-betrayal. After the hasty and intimate avowals forced from them, the shadow of silence fell upon them. “Say something!” pleaded the Countess timidly. “Be silent, or I shall strangle you ... with my own hands!” cried the dancer. The Countess shrank back, feeling herself, beside the other, to resemble a hare in the claws of a mighty and powerful bird of prey. Food was pushed into the cell, but neither of the women perceived it. It grew dark, and the dancer lay down, fully dressed, upon one of the plank beds. The Countess imitated her and stretched herself on the other straw pallet. The night passed by, and in the long sleepless hours their fancies flowed into a dark and turgid stream. Suddenly in the gloom Cara’s voice was heard: “Are you asleep?” “No.” “Why are you here?” The Countess had not the courage to repeat her tissue of lies, and she remained silent. Cara, too, kept silent for a while, then she said suddenly: “You were sent here to pump me! Have I told you anything?” “Yes.” “About _him_?” “Yes.” “Did I tell you his name?” “No.” “That’s all right then, otherwise you would never leave this place alive. But if you are lying, and I had told it you, I tell you now, he _has_ no name. He is a thousand men, a whole nation, a part of the universe!” “Just like the man I have been thinking of,” reflected the Countess, but an instant later she did not know whether she had not spoken her thought aloud. “When are you going away again?” “When you want me to.”