He now had a closer explanation of his attachment to stupidity than he had been able to give Lowndes. It was that his artist’s asceticism could not support anything more serious than such an elementary rival, and, when sex was in the ascendant, it turned his eyes away from the highest beauty and dulled the extremities of his senses, so that he had nothing but rudimentary inclinations left. But in the interests of his animalism he was turning to betray the artist in him. For he had been saying to himself lately that a more suitable lady-companion _must_ be found; one, that is, he need not be ashamed of. He felt that the time had arrived for Life to come in for some of the benefits of Consciousness. Anastasya’s beauty, bangles, and good sense were the very thing. Despite himself, Sorbert was dragged out of his luxury of reminiscence without knowing it, and began discriminating between the Bertha enjoyment felt through the pungent German medium of her friends, and this novel sensation. Yet this sensation was an intruder. It was as though a man having wandered sentimentally along an abandoned route, a tactless and gushing acquaintance had been discovered in unlikely possession. Tarr asked her from what part of Germany she came. “My parents are Russian. I was born in Berlin and brought up in America. We live in Dresden,” she answered. This accounted for her jarring on his maudlin German reveries. “Lots of Russian families have settled latterly in Germany, haven’t they?” he asked. “Russians are still rather savage. The more bourgeois a place or thing is the more it attracts them. German watering places, musical centres and so on, they like about as well as anything. They often settle there.” “Do you regard yourself as a Russian—or a German?” “Oh, a Russian. I⸺” “I’m glad of that,” said Tarr, quite forgetting where he was, and forgetting the nature of his occupation. “Don’t you like Germans then?” “Well, now you remind me of it, I do:—Very much, in fact,” He shook himself with self-reproach and gazed round benignantly and comfortably at his hosts. “Else I shouldn’t be here! They’re such a nice, modest, assimilative race, with an admirable sense of duty. They are born servants; excellent mercenary troops, I understand. They should always be used as such.” “I see you know them _à fond_.” She laughed in the direction of the Lipmann. He made a deprecating gesture. “Not much. But they are an accessible and friendly people.” “You are English?” “Yes.” He treated his hosts with a warm benignity which sought, perhaps, to make up for past affronts. It appeared only to gratify partially. He was treating them like part and parcel of Bertha. They were not ready to accept this valuation, that of chattels of her world. The two Kinderbachs came over and made an affectionate demonstration around and upon Anastasya. She got up, scattering them abruptly and went over to the piano.