Kreisler had lately been spoken about uncharitably among them. By inevitable analogy he had, in her mind, been pushed into the same boat with Tarr. She always _felt_ herself a little _without_ the circle. So, Bertha, still in this unusual way clinging to him (although she had ceased plying him with conversation) they proceeded along the solitary backwater of Boulevard in which they were. Pipes lay all along the edge of excavations to their left, large flaccid surface-machinery of the City. They tramped on under the small uniform trees Paris is planted with, a tame and insipid obsession. Kreisler ignored his surroundings. He was transporting himself, self-guarded Siberian exile, from one cheerless place to another. To Bertha Nature still had the usual florid note. The immediate impression caused by the moonlight was implicated with a thousand former impressions: she did not discriminate. It was the moon illumination of several love affairs. Kreisler, more restless, renovated his susceptibility every three years or so. The moonlight for him was hardly nine months old, and belonged to Paris, where there was no romance. For Bertha the darkened trees rustled with the delicious and tragic suggestions of the passing of time and lapse of life. The black unlighted windows of the tall houses held within, for her, breathless and passionate forms, engulfed in intense eternities of darkness and whispers. Or a lighted one, in its contrast to the bland light of the moon, so near, suggested something infinitely distant. There was something fatal in the rapid never-stopping succession of their footsteps—loud, deliberate, continual noise. Her strange companion’s dreamy roughness, this romantic enigma of the evening, suddenly captured her fancy. The machine and indiscriminate side of her awoke. She took his hand—rapid, soft and humble, she struck the deep German chord, vibrating rudimentarily in the midst of his cynicism. “You are suffering! I know you are suffering. I wish I could do something for you. Cannot I?” Kreisler began tickling the palm of her hand slightly. When he saw it interrupted her words, he stopped, holding her hand solemnly as though it had been a fish slipped there for some unknown reason. Having her hand—her often-trenchant hand with its favourite gesture of sentimental over-emphasis—captive, made her discourse almost quiet. “I know you have been wronged and wounded. Treat me as a sister: let me help you. You think my behaviour odd: do you think I’m a funny girl? But, ah! we walk about and torment each other enough! I knew you were not drunk, but were half-cracked with something—Perhaps you had better not come on to this place⸺” He quickened his steps, and still gazing stolidly ahead, drew her by the hand. “I only should like you to feel I am your friend,” she said. “Right!” with promptness came through his practical moustache. “You’re afraid I—” she looked at the ground, he ahead.