Now the music stopped, there was an intermission, and refreshments were served. The mail clerk hurried about in person with a tea-tray of herring salad, serving the ladies; but before Ingeborg Holm he actually dropped on one knee as he offered her the dish, making her blush for joy. The people in the hall now began to be aware of the spectator in the doorway, after all, and strange, searching glances came upon him from pretty, heated faces; but he stood his ground. Ingeborg and Hans, too, passed their eyes over him almost at the same moment, with that complete indifference which almost has the appearance of contempt. Suddenly, however, he became conscious that from somewhere a glance had reached him and was resting on him ... He turned his head, and at once his eyes met the ones he had felt. A girl stood not far from him, with a pale, narrow, delicate face which he had noticed before. She had not danced much, the cavaliers had not paid much attention to her, and he had seen her sitting alone against the wall with bitterly closed lips. And she stood alone now, too. She wore a bright, filmy dress, like the others, but under the diaphanous goods her bare shoulders looked sharp and scanty, and the lean neck went down so far between these pitiful shoulders that the quiet girl seemed almost a little deformed. She held her hands in their thin short gloves in front of her flat breast so that the fingertips barely touched. With lowered head she looked up at Tonio Kröger out of black, swimming eyes. He turned away ... Here stood Hans and Ingeborg quite close to him. He had sat down beside her,--she was perhaps his sister,--and surrounded by other red-cheeked children of men they ate and drank, chattered merrily, called out teasing remarks to each other with ringing voices, and let their laughter peal out. Could he not approach them a little? Could he not direct to him or her a jest that would come to his mind, and that they must at least answer with a smile? It would make him happy, he longed for it; he would then return more contentedly to his room, with the consciousness of having established some little community with them. He thought out what he might say; but he did not find the courage to say it. And then too it was as of old: they would not understand him, would listen with disapproval to what he could say. For their language was not his language. Now the dance was to begin again, it seemed. The mail clerk revealed an all-embracing activity. He hurried around and invited every one to engage partners, pushed and cleared away chairs and glasses with the aid of the waiter, gave orders to the musicians, and took some awkward ones, who did not know where to go, by the shoulders and pushed them along before him. What were they going to do? Groups of eight couples were forming sets ... A terrible memory made Tonio Kröger blush. They were dancing the quadrille.