“Close the door!” it shouted, “there’s a draught. You took a long time to consider my words. I’ve been waiting. Forgive me, Tarr. My words were acidulated whores, but my heart”—she put her hand on the skin roughly above that organ—“my heart was completely full of sugar! The acidulated _demi-mondaine_ was a trick. It occupied your mind. You didn’t notice me take your key!” His vanity was soothed. The key in her possession, which could only have been taken in the café, seemed to justify the harsh dialogue. She stood before him now with her arms up, hands joined behind her head. This impulse to take her clothes off had the cultural hygienic touch so familiar to him. The Naples yellow of the hair was the same colour as Bertha’s, only it was coarser and thicker, Bertha’s being fine. Anastasya’s dark face, therefore, had the appearance almost of a mask. “Will you engage me as your model? Je fais de la réclame pour les Grecs.” “You are very Ionian—hardly Greek. But I don’t require a model. I never use nude models.” “Well, I must dress again, I suppose.” She turned towards a chair where her clothes were piled. But Tarr had learnt the laws of cultural emancipation. He shouted, “I accept, I accept!” He lifted her up in his arms, kissing her in the mass, as it were, and carried her through the door at the back of the studio leading to his bedroom. * * * * * “Tarr, be my love. I don’t want to give you up.” This was said next morning, the sunlight having taken the place of the moonlight, but striking on the opposite side of the house. “You won’t hear marriage talked about by me. I want to rescue you from your Bertha habits. Allow yourself to be rescued! We’re very well together, aren’t we? I’m not doing Bertha a bad turn, either, really. I admit my motive is quite selfish. What do you say?” “I am your slave!” Anastasya rolled up against him with the movement of a seal. “Thank you, Tarr. That’s better than _having a slave_, isn’t it?” “Yes, I think everything is in order.” “Then you’re my efficient chimpanzee?” “No, I’m the new animal; we haven’t found a name for it yet. It will succeed the Superman. Back to the Earth!” “Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Kiss me!” CHAPTER IV Tarr crawled towards Bertha that day on the back of a Place St. Michel bus. He did not like his job. The secret of his visits to Bertha and interminable liaison was that he really never had meant to leave her at all, he reflected. He had not meant to leave her altogether. He was just playing. Or rather, a long debt of disgraceful behaviour was accumulating, that he knew would have to be met. It was deliberately increased by him, because he knew he would not repudiate it. But it would have been absurd not to try to escape.