He had forgotten her face, the inimitable veracity of her gestures, her power of feeling and inspiring ecstasy, her whole powerful, delicate, flowerlike, radiant being. Everything seemed to yield to her, even the elements. When she appeared in the street, the sun shone more purely and the air was more temperate; and thus the wild turmoil about her was transformed into a steady and obedient tide. Susan said to Christian: “We are to dance here, and have offers. But we don’t like the Prussians. They seem an arid folk, who save their money for soldiers and barracks. I haven’t seen a real face. All men and all women look alike. They may be worthy, no doubt they are; but they seem machine-made.” “Eva herself is a German,” Christian rebuked the woman’s spiteful words. “Bah, if a genius is cast forth from heaven and tumbles on the earth, it is blind and cannot choose its place. Where is Herr von Crammon?” she interrupted herself. “Why doesn’t he come to see us? And whom have you brought in his stead?” She poked out her chin toward Amadeus Voss, who stood timidly in a corner, and whose large spectacles made him look like an owl. “Who is that?” Who is that? The same question appeared in the astonished faces of Wiguniewski and of the Marquis of Tavera. Amadeus was new to the world with a vengeance. The fixed expression on his features had something so silly at times, that Christian was ashamed of him and the others laughed. Voss wandered about the streets, pushed himself into crowds, surveyed the exhibits behind the plate-glass windows of shops, stared into coffee-houses, bought newspapers and pamphlets, but found no way of calming his soul. All he could see was the face of the dancer, and the gestures with which she cut a fruit or greeted a friend or bowed or sat down in a chair or arose or smelled a flower, or the motions of her lids and lips and neck and shoulders and hips and legs. And he found all these things in her provocative and affected, and yet they had bitten into his brain as acid bites into metal. One evening he entered Christian’s room, and his face was the colour of dust. “Who really is Eva Sorel?” he asked, with a bitter rancour. “Where does she come from? To whom does she belong? What are we doing here with her? Tell me something about her. Enlighten me.” He threw himself into a chair, and stared at Christian. When Christian, unprepared for this tempest of questions, made no answer, he went on: “You’ve put me into a new skin, but the old Adam writhes in it still. Is this a masquerade? If so, tell me at least what the masks represent. I seem to be disguised too, but badly. I expect you to improve my disguise.” “You aren’t disguised any worse than the others,” Christian said, with a soothing smile.