Voss rested his head on his two hands. “So she’s a dancer, a dancer,” he murmured thoughtfully. “To my way of feeling there has always been something lewd about that word and what it means. How can it help arousing images that bring the blush to one’s cheek?” Suddenly he looked up, and asked with a piercing glance: “Is she your mistress?” The blood left Christian’s face. “I think I understand what disturbs you so,” he said. “But now that you’ve gone with me, you must bear with me. I don’t know how long we shall stay with this crowd, and I can’t myself tell exactly why we are here. But you must not ask me about Eva Sorel. We must not discuss her either for praise or blame.” Voss was silenced. XIII Christian, Amadeus, Bradshaw, Tavera, and Wiguniewski went by motor. Eva used the train. But this way of travelling agreed with her as ill as any other. All night she lay sleepless in her crumpled silks, her head buried among pillows. Susan crouched by her, giving her perfume or a book or a glass of cold lemonade. There was a prickling in her limbs that would not let her rest, a weight on her bosom, an alternation of thought and fancy, of willing and the weariness of willing in her mind. The hum of the wheels on the rails cut into her nerves; the sable landscape, as it glided by, irritated her like a delusion that forever changed and melted. Malignity seemed to lurk in the fields; treacherous forests seemed to block the way; she saw haunted houses and terror-stricken men. “What a torturer time is!” she whispered. “Oh, that it stood before me, and I could have it whipped.” Susan bent nearer, and gazed at her attentively. Suddenly she whispered tenderly: “What do you expect of him? What is the purpose of this new game? He’s the most banal of them all. I never heard him make a polished or a witty remark. Does he realize what you are? Not in his wildest dreams. His head is empty. Your art means about as much to him as the acrobatics of a circus dancer to some dreary shop-keeper. Nations are at your feet, and he grants you a supercilious smile. You have given the world a new kind of delight, and this German know-it-all is untouched and unchanged by it.” Eva said: “If the North Sea is too sinister, we must seek a coast in the South.”