Anastasya freed herself at once from her partner and pale and frowning (but as though waiting) was looking after Kreisler curiously. She would have liked him to stop. He had done something strange and was as suddenly going away. That was unsatisfactory. They looked at each other blankly. He showed no sign of stopping: she just stared. Suddenly it was comic. She burst out laughing. But they had clashed, like people in the dance, and were both disappearing from each other again, the shock hardly over. The _contact_ had been brought about. He was still as surprised at his action, which had been done “in a moment,” as she was. Anastasya felt, too, in what way this had been _contact_. She felt his hand on her arm as though it had been she he had seized. This rough figure disappeared in the doorway, as incapable of explaining anything. She shivered nervously as she grasped her partner’s arm again, at this merely physical _contact_. “What’s the matter with that chap?” her partner asked, conscious of a lameness, but of something queer going on. This question had been asked a few minutes before elsewhere. “Herr Kreisler is behaving very strangely. Do you think he’s been drinking?” Fräulein Lipmann had asked Eckhart. Eckhart was a little drunk himself. He took a very decided view of Kreisler’s case. “Comme toute la Pologne! As drunk as the whole of Poland!” he affirmed. But he only gave it as an opinion, adding no sign of particular indignation. He was beaming with greedy generosity at his great Amoureuse. “Ah! here he comes again!” said Fräulein Lipmann at the door. (It was when Kreisler had started up in search of Soltyk). So Kreisler disappeared in the doorway. He passed through the refreshment-room. In a small room beyond he sat down by an open window. Anastasya had at last got into line with him. She had been startled, awakened, and had also laughed. This was an exact and complete response to Kreisler at the present. Something difficult to understand and which should have been alarming for a woman, the feel of the first tugs of the maelstrom he was producing and conducting all on his own, and which required her for its heart: and then laughter, necessarily, once one was in that atmosphere, like laughing gas, with its gusty tickling.