Christian went up to the table and rested the index finger of one hand on its top. With lowered head he said slowly: “Don’t demand a decision of me. I cannot make one. I should hate to hurt you. I don’t want something to happen again that has happened so often before in my life. If you feel impelled to come--come! Don’t consider me. Don’t think, above all, that I would then leave you in the lurch. But just now is a critical time in my life. More I cannot say.” Johanna could gather nothing but what was hopeless for herself from these words. Yet through them there sounded a note that softened their merely selfish regretfulness. With a characteristically pliant gesture, she stretched out her arm to Christian. Her pose was formal and her smile faint, as she said: “Then, au revoir--perhaps!” XXII When the girl had gone, Christian lay down on the sofa and folded his hands beneath his head. Thus he lay until dawn. He neither switched off the light nor did he close his eyes. He saw the paintless stairs that led to the den where he had been and the red carpet of the inn soiled by many feet; he saw the lamp in the desolate street and the watch charms on the proprietor’s waistcoat; he saw the brandy bottle on the shelf, and the green shawl of one of the drunken women, and the tattooed symbols on the sailor’s naked arm: the anchor, the winged wheel, the phallus, the fish, the snake; he saw the rubber cherries on the prostitute’s hat and the silver brooch with the garnets and the foolish motto: _Ricordo di Venezia_. And more and more as he thought of these things they awakened in him an ever surer feeling of freedom and of liberation, and seemed to release him from other things that he had hitherto loved, the rare and precious things that he had loved so exclusively and fruitlessly. And they seemed to release him likewise from men and women whose friendship or love had been sterile in the end. As he lay there and gazed into space, he lived in these poor and mean things, and all fruitless occupations and human relationships lost their importance; and even the thought of Eva ceased to torment him and betray him into fruitless humiliation. That radiant and regal creature allured him no more, when he thought of the blood-stained face of the harlot. For the latter aroused in him a feeling akin to curiosity that gradually filled his soul so entirely that it left room for nothing else. Toward dawn he slumbered for an hour. Then he arose, and bathed his face in cold water, left the hotel, hired a cab, and drove to the inn called “The King of Greece.” The nightwatchman was still at his post. He recognized this early guest and guided him with disagreeable eagerness up two flights of stairs to the room of Karen Engelschall. Christian knocked. There was no answer. “You just go in, sir,” said the porter. “There ain’t no key and the latch don’t work. All kinds of things will happen, and it’s better for us to have the doors unlocked.”