Christian answered: “It seems to me as though I ought to know what you mean. But I don’t want to know it. Because you see, you ... I ... all this ... it’s too insignificant.” He shook his head in a troubled way. “Too insignificant.” “What, what do you mean by that?” Eva cried in fright, and clung to his right hand with both hers. Tensely she looked into his face. “Too insignificant,” Christian repeated stubbornly, as though he could find no other words. Then he reflected on all he had said and heard with his accustomed scepticism and toughmindedness, and arose and bade his friend good-night. XVII Edgar Lorm was playing in Karlsruhe. On a certain evening he had increased the tempo of his playing, and given vent to his disgust with his rôle, the piece, his colleagues, and his audience so obviously that there had been hissing after the last act. “I’m a poor imbecile,” he said to his colleagues at their supper in a restaurant. “Every play actor is a poor imbecile.” He looked at them all contemptuously, and smacked his lips. “We must have had more inner harmony in the days when we were suspected of stealing shirts from the housewife’s line and children were frightened at our name. Don’t you think so? Or maybe you’re quite comfortable in your stables.” His companions observed a respectful silence. Wasn’t he the famous man who filled the houses, and whom both managers and critics flattered? Dust was whirling in the streets, the dust of summer, as he returned to his hotel. How desolate I feel, he thought, and shook himself. Yet his step was free and firm as a young huntsman’s. When he had received his key and turned toward the lift, Judith Imhof suddenly stood before him. He started, and then drew back. “I am ready to be poor,” she said, almost without moving her lips. “Are you here on business, dear lady?” Lorm asked in a clear, cold voice. “Undoubtedly you are expecting your husband----?” “I am expecting no one but you, and I am alone,” answered Judith, and her eyes blazed. He considered the situation with a wrinkled face that made him look old and homely. Then with a gesture he invited her to follow him, and they entered the empty reading room. A single electric lamp burned above the table covered with newspapers. They sat down in two leather armchairs. Judith toyed nervously with her gold mesh-bag. She wore a travelling frock, and her face was tired. Lorm began the conversation. “First of all: Is there any folly in your mind that can still be prevented?” “None,” Judith answered in a frosty tone. “If the condition you made was only a trick to scare me off, and you are cowardly enough to repudiate it at the moment of its fulfilment, then, of course, I have been self-deceived, and my business here is at an end. Don’t soothe me with well-meant speeches. The matter was too serious to me for that.”