She passed her hand over his forehead to chase the horror away. But she recognized the power of her touch and was frightened by her image in his eye. When from the stage where she was bowing amid the flowers and the applause she perceived the touch of his glances she felt in them a threat of enslavement. When on his arm she approached a table and heard the delighted whisper of people at them both, she seemed to herself the victim of a conspiracy, and a hesitation crept into her bearing. When Crammon, practising a strange self-abnegation, spoke of Christian in extravagant terms, and Susan, even in their nocturnal talks, grew mythical concerning his high descent, when Cardillac grew restless and Cornelius Ermelang, the young German poet who adored her, asked questions with his timid eyes--when these things came to pass she feigned coldness and became unapproachable. She scolded Susan, she made fun of Crammon, she laughed at Jean Cardillac, jestingly she bent her knee to the poet. She confused her entire court of painters, politicians, journalists, and dandies with her incomprehensible mimicry and flexibility, and said that Eidolon was only an illusion and a symbol. Christian did not understand this--neither this nor her swift withdrawals from him, and then her turning back and luring him anew. A passionate gesture would arise and suddenly turn to reproof, and one of delight would turn into estrangement. It was useless to try to bind her by her own words. She would join the tips of her fingers and turn her head aside and look out of the corners of her eyes at the floor with a cool astuteness. Once he had driven her into a corner, but she called Susan, leaned her head against the woman’s shoulder and whispered in her ear. Another time, in order to test her feeling, he spoke of his trip to England. With charmingly curved hands she gathered up her skirt and surveyed her feet. Another time, in the light and cheerful tone they used to each other, he reproached her with making a fool of him. She crossed her arms and smiled mysteriously, wild and subdued at once. She looked as though she had stepped out of a Byzantine mosaic. He knew the freedom of her life. But when he sought for the motives that guided her, he had no means of finding them. He knew nothing of the intellectual fire of the dancer, but took her to be a woman like any other. He did not see that that which is, in other women, the highest stake and the highest form of life, needed to be in her life but a moment’s inclination and a moment’s gliding by. He did not grasp the form in her, but saw the contour melt in glimmering change. Coming from the sensual regions of one possessed like Adda Castillo, he breathed here an air purified of all sultriness, which intoxicated but also frightened him, which quickened the beat of the heart but sharpened the vision.