"I should like to drive on like this for ever," she whispered, seeking a support for her head. Then it seemed suddenly as if Walter's arm was round her waist and as if her left cheek rested against Walter's throat, as once in those blissful November nights. But how did Walter come here now? She started up, wide awake again. This was not Walter beside her. She was under no delusion as to who it was. She was ashamed to change her position, and lay with wide-open eyes for quite a long time, listening to the beating of his heart--how it beat, right up his arm! "He will not demand the price which it is customary with our compatriots to ask of pretty women," Walter had written. Now here he was demanding it with all his might. With what contempt Walter would look down from his picture at her when she stepped into the lamplight of her corner drawing-room half an hour later! Walter who passed with everyone as her betrothed, even with this man into whose arms she had slipped, Walter, to whom she must be faithful and true if she hoped for salvation in this life. It was really heavenly, nevertheless, to be lying thus. She felt as if she belonged somewhere again, and how terrible her loneliness had been! Still, it was no good. So she moved cautiously, as if she was afraid of hurting him, and freed herself from his arm, to take refuge against the side cushions. "Why don't you stay?" he asked, stammering like an inebriated man. "Weren't you feeling comfortable?" She shook her head. He went on asking her with passionate vehemence, but she would not answer, feeling that every word she spoke would commit her still further. Then he caught her hand, that hung down passively, and pressed it. "I mayn't," she whispered, withdrawing her hand. "Neither may you." "Why mayn't we?" "Because you would bitterly regret it afterward when you had to render account to him, if you had abused your trust." "_Him_! Whom do you mean?" "Whom?" she echoed. "Why, whom else could I mean?... Haven't you said a hundred times that you are only his deputy, that you----" A laugh interrupted her, a hoarse guilty laugh. He had clasped his hands round his knees, and laughed and breathed deeply and laughed again, like someone relieved from an intolerable burden. A horrible dread gradually became a certainty within her. "It was all untrue?" she faltered, staring at him. "All! It was all nonsense from beginning to end, a tissue of humbug," he cried. "He wrote to me once, only once, before he left Germany. 'Take up with her; it would be a pity if she went to the dogs.' Nothing more, not another word.... There, now you know.... I've got it off my mind. It's been a jolly heavy load, I can tell you.... But what was I to do? Having begun, I had to go on." He flung up the window and leaned out, panting hard.