This time he was greeted with long mournful glances. He felt she had thought of what she should say. This interview meant a great deal to her. His friendship meant more to her now than ever. The abject little room seemed to be thrust forward to awaken his memories and ask for pity. An intense atmosphere of Teutonic suicide permeated everything. He could not move an eyelid or a muscle without wounding or slighting something. It was like being in a dark kitchen at night, where you know at every step you will put your foot on a beetle. It had a still closer analogy to this in the disgust he felt for these too naked and familiar things he was treading on. He scowled at Beethoven, who scowled back at him like a reflection in a mirror. It was the fate of both of them to haunt this room. The _Mona Lisa_ was there, and the Breton sabots and jars. She might have a change of scenery sometimes! He felt unreasonably that she must have left things in the same place to reproduce a former mood in him. His photograph was prominent on her writing-table; she seemed to say (with a sort of sickly idiocy), “You see, _he_ is faithful to me!” She preceded him to her sitting-room. As he looked at her back he thought of her as taking a set number of paces, then turning round abruptly, confronting him. From a typical and similar enervation of the will to that which was at the bottom of his troubles, he could hardly stop himself from putting his arm round her waist while they stood for a moment close to each other. He did not wish to do this as a response to any resuscitating desire. It was only because it was the one thing he must not do. To throw himself into the abyss of perplexity he had just escaped from tempted him. The dykes and simulations of conduct were perpetually threatened by his neurasthenia in this way. He kept his hands in his pockets, however. When they had reached the room, she turned round, as he had half imagined, and caught hold of his hands. “Sorbert, Sorbert!” The words were said separately, each emphatic in significance. The second was a repetition only of the first. She seemed calling him by his name to conjure back his self again. Her face was a strained and anxious mask. “What is it, Bertha?” “I don’t know!” She dropped his hands, drooped her head to the right and turned away. She sat down; he sat down opposite her. “Anything new?” he asked. “Anything new? Yes!” She gazed at him with an insistent meaning. He concluded this was just over-emphasis, with nothing behind it; or, rather, everything. “Well, I have something new as well!” “Have you, Sorbert?” “First of all, how have my visits struck you lately? What explanation have you found for them?” “Oh, none. Why find an explanation? Why do you ask?” “I thought I would explain.” “Well?”