Rapidly brushing the waves of hair from her drawn forehead she ran into the next room and returned with the bottle bearing three stars on its label from which she herself took a tiny drop occasionally--"when my mind loses tone for study" as she was wont to say in self-justification. A crimson afterglow, reflected from the walls of the houses opposite, filled the little drawing-room in which the mass of feminine ornaments glimmered and glittered. "I've really become quite a stranger here," he thought, regarding all these things with the curiosity of one who has come after an absence. From each object hung, like a dewdrop, the memory of some exquisite hour. "You look about you so," Alice said with an undertone of anxiety in her voice, "don't you like it here any longer?" "What are you thinking of," he exclaimed, "I like it better daily." She was about to reply but fell silent and looked into space with a smile of wistful irony. "If I except the _Life of Jesus_ and the Kantian--what do you call the things?" "Antinomies." "Aha--_anti_ and _nomos_--I understand--well, if I except these dusty superfluities, I may say that your furnishings are really faultless. The quotations from Goethe are really more appropriate, although I could do without them." "I'll have them swept out," she said in playful submission. "You are a dear girl," he said playfully and passed his hand caressingly over her severely combed hair. She grasped his arm with both hands and remained motionless for a moment during which her eyes fastened themselves upon his with a strangely rigid gleam. "What evil have I done?" he asked. "Do you remember our childhood's verse: 'I am small, my heart is pure?' Have mercy on me." "I was only playing at passion," she said with the old half-wistful, half-mocking smile, "in order that our relations may not lose solid ground utterly." "What do you mean?" he asked, pretending astonishment. "And do you really think, Richard, that between us, things, being as they are--are right?" "I can't imagine any change that could take place at present." She hid a hot flush of shame. She was obviously of the opinion that he had interpreted her meaning in the light of a desire for marriage. All earthly possibilities had been discussed between them: this one alone had been sedulously avoided in all their conversations. "Don't misunderstand me," he continued, determined to skirt the dangerous subject with grace and ease, "there's no question here of anything external, of any change of front with reference to the world. It's far too late for that. ... Let us remain--if I may so put it--in our spiritual four walls. Given our characters or, I had better say, given your character I see no other relation between us that promises any permanence.... If I were to pursue you with a kind of infatuation, or you me with jealousy--it would be insupportable to us both." She did not reply but gently rolled and unrolled the narrow, blue silk scarf of her gown.