"Yes," she said softly, "I wish we could be friends again. But the situation at home is so very delicate." After a long silence, he uttered, so low that she could hardly hear him: "Are there no other places?" The band still played _Wiener Mad'l_. "It's getting late," she faltered, wondering where she was going to find the strength to rise from her chair. "Yes, go back to your tomb. Are there any mirrors in it? Do you ever look in them? Do you see in them what's happening to you? Your eyes are losing their luster; you're getting haggard, and in a little while one will see the bones under your skin. At this moment you look like the devil." Without raising his voice, without ceasing to stare as though bored at the old Russian silver box from which he was taking a cigarette with trembling fingers, he pronounced malignantly, "You are losing your beauty, Lilla--all that you ever had to plunge a man into hell. Presently, thank God, there will be nothing to love." It seemed to her that he had shouted the words at the top of his voice, that the whole multitude must have heard him, and must have seen the look that he showed her for the briefest instant--the look of a damned soul peering through flames that only she could quench. At the full impact of pity and remorse at last, she felt her spirit stumbling toward his through that inferno. The promenaders perceived a woman and a man, expressionless though rather worn and pale, exchanging apparently commonplace words, while staring down at the horses. "I'll phone you to-night----" "Not the phone." "With an indolent movement he thrust his shaking hands into his coat pockets, and tried again: "I'll drive over in the morning. You might be taking a walk----" Weak and sick, she glanced down at the buttons of her gloves, before rising to her feet. She heard Anna Zanidov saying to Fanny Brassfield, "Well, I've lost those friends of mine. No matter. I'll find a taxi." Pouncing upon this chance to escape, for the moment, from him and from herself, Lilla blurted out: "Let me give you a lift. Come on." Cornelius Rysbroek saw her lovely head turning away from him, the swirl of her cloak as she ascended the steps, the flash of her tapering boot heel. He then stood looking round him through his ironical, weary mask, one hand on the back of a chair, however, as if without that support his quaking legs might let him fall to the floor. CHAPTER XLII The limousine glided northward. A cold rain was falling. Behind the glistening windowpanes the scene was continually melting from one blackness into another. At each flash of radiance Madame Zanidov was revealed motionless in her corner, muffled in her cloak, with closed eyes. "Is she reading my thoughts?" Lilla wondered.