“He cannot expiate the lust of the eye,” Christian thought, and avoided Eva’s glance. Amadeus Voss left the company and the house. On the street he ran as though pursued, clasping his hands to his temples. He had pushed his derby hat far back. When he reached his room, he opened his box and drew out a package of letters. They were the stolen letters of the unknown woman F. He sat down by his lamp, and read with tense absorption and a burning forehead. It was not the first night that he had passed thus. When Eva was alone with Christian, she asked: “Why did you bring that man with you?” He laughed, and lifted her up in his arms, and carried her through many flights of rooms and out of light into darkness. “The sea cries!” her lips said at his ear. He prayed that all sounds might die out of the world except the thunder of the sea and that young voice at his ear. He prayed that those two might silence the disquiet that overcame him in her very embraces and made him, at the end of every ecstasy, yearn for its renewal. That slender, passionate body throbbed toward him. Yet he heard the lamentation of an alien voice: What shall we do? “Why did you bring this man?” Eva asked him far in the night, between sleep and sleep. “I cannot bear him. There is always sweat on his forehead. He comes from a sinister world.” There was a bluish twilight in the room that came from the blue flame of a blue lamp, and a bluish darkness lay beyond the windows. “Why don’t you answer me?” she urged, and raised herself, showing the pale face amid its wilderness of brown hair. He had no answer for her. He feared the insufficiency of any explanation, as well as the replies that she would find. “What is the meaning of it all? What ails you, dearest?” Eva drew him toward her, and clung to him, and kissed his eyes thirstily. “I’ll ask him to avoid your presence,” said Christian. And suddenly he saw himself and Voss in the farm yard of Nettersheim, saw the kneeling men and maid servants, the old rusty lantern, the dead woman, and the carpenter who was measuring her for her coffin. “Tell me what he means to you,” whispered Eva. “It seems to me suddenly as though you were gone. Where are you really? Tell me, dear friend.” “You should have let me love you in those old days in Paris,” said Christian gently, and softly rested his cheek against her bosom, “in those days when Crammon and I came to you.” “Speak, only speak,” Eva breathed, seeking to hide the fright in her heart. Her eyes gleamed, and her skin was like luminous white satin. In the darkness her face had a spiritualized thinness; the restrained charm of her gestures mastered the hour, and her smile was deep and intricate of meaning, and everything about her was play and mirroring and raptness and unexpected magic. Christian looked upon her.