“No. I’m going to dine here to-night,” and Bertha accompanied her to the door. CHAPTER VII People appear with a startling suddenness sometimes out of the fog of Time and Space. Bertha did not visualize Kreisler very readily. She was surprised when she saw him below her windows the next day. He stared up at the house with an eager speculation. He considered the house and studio opposite. Behind the curtains Bertha stood with emotions of an ambushed soldier. She felt on her face the blankness of the wall of the house, its silence and unresponsiveness. He appeared almost to be looking at her face, magnified and exposed.—Then it appeared to her that it was _he_, the enemy getting in. She wished to stop him there, before he came any further. In the processes of his uncertainty he was so innocuous and distant, for the moment. His first visit. There he was: so far, a stranger. Why should these little obstacles of strangeness—which gate to enter, which bell to ring—be taken away from this particular individual? He should remain “stranger” for her, where he came from. But he had burrowed his way through, was at the bell already, and would soon be at herself. _She_ found here, in her room, was very different from _she_ found outside, in restaurant or street. The clothing of this _décor_ was a nakedness. She struggled for a moment up from the obstinate dream, made of artificial but tenacious sentiments, shaped by contretemps of all sorts that had been accumulating like a snowball ever since her last interview with Tarr. Still somewhat wrapt in this interview she rolled in its nightmarish, continually metamorphosed, substance through space. Where would it land her, this electric, directionless, vital affair? This invasion of Indifference and Difference had floated her, successfully, away in _some_ direction. The bell rang again. She could see him, almost, through the wall, standing phlegmatic and erect. They had not spoken yet. But they had been some minutes “in touch.” Perhaps he was _mad_! Elsa, cold, matter-of-fact, but with warnings for her, came into her mind. However much she resisted the facts, there was very little reason for this meeting. It was a now unnecessary, exploded, and objectless impulse, sapped by Anastasya. She was going through with something from laziness and obstinacy mixed, that no longer meant anything.