He slept the greater part of the day, but the next he spent nervous and awake. In the afternoon a full confirmation of his story reached the authorities. It was likely that the following morning he would be sent to Paris. It meant, then, that he was going to be tried as a kind of murderer. He could not allege complete accident. The thought of Paris, the vociferous courts, the ennuis of a criminal case about this affair, so thoroughly ended and boringly out of date, disturbed him extremely. Then the Russian—he would have to see him again. Kreisler felt that he was being terribly worried once more. Sorrow for himself bowed him down. This journey to Paris resembled his crossing of the German frontier. He had felt that it was impossible to see his father. That represented an effort he would do anything to avoid. Resentment against his parent had vanished. It was this that made a meeting so difficult. It was a stranger, with an ill will that had survived his own, awaiting him. Noise, piercing noise, effort, awaited him revengefully. He knew exactly what his father would do and say. If there had been a single item that he could not forecast!—But there was not the least item. Paris was the same. The energy and obstinacy of the rest of the world, the world that would question him and drag him about, these frightened him as something mad. Bitzenko appealed most to this new-born timidity. Bitzenko was like some favourite dish a man has one day eaten too much of, and will never be able again to enjoy, or even support. On the other hand, he became quite used to his cell. His mind was sick, and this room had a clinical severity. It had all the economical elements of a place in which a human operation might be performed. He became fond of it as patients get an appetite for the leanness of convalescent life. He lay on his bed. He turned over the shell of many empty and depressing hours he had lived. He took particular pleasure in these listless concave shapes. His “good times” were avoided. Days spent with his present stepmother, before his father knew her, gave him a particularly numbing and nondescript feeling. He sat up, listening to the noises from the neighbouring rooms and corridors. It began to sound to him like one steady preparation for his removal. Steps bustled about getting this ready and getting that ready. The police-station had cost him some trouble to enter. But they had been attracted to each other from the start. Something in the form of an illicit attachment now existed between them. Buildings are female. There is no such thing as a male building. This practical and pretentious small modern edifice was having its romance. Otto Kreisler was its romance. It was now warning him. It echoed sharply and insistently the feet of its policemen.