“Nothing that I know of,” Johanna replied. She wrinkled her forehead like one who was helpless and at bay. To get rid of the burden of his insistence courteously, she promised to write him; but she had scarcely uttered the words when they made her very unhappy. A promise had something very binding to her. It made her feel a victim; and the uncanny tension which this man caused her to feel paralyzed her will, and yet had a morbid attraction for her. Voss drove home in a motor car. His mind was filled by one gnawing, flaring thought: Had she been Christian’s mistress or not? From the moment he had seen Johanna again, this question had assumed an overwhelming importance in his mind. It involved possession and renunciation, ultimate veracity and deceit; it involved inferences that inflamed his senses, and possibilities that threatened to be decisive in his life. He fixed his thoughts upon the image of Johanna’s face, and studied it like a cabalistic document. He argued and analysed and shredded motives and actions like a pettifogger. For his darkened life had again been entered by one who caused strange entanglements and enchainments and focused all decisions in one point. He felt the presage of storms such as he had not ever known. Next morning, when he came from his bath and was about to sit down to breakfast, his housekeeper said to him: “Fräulein Engelschall is here to see you. She’s in the sitting-room.” He swallowed his chocolate hastily and went in. Karen sat at a round table, and looked at photographs that were lying on it. They all belonged to Christian and were pictures of friends, of landscapes and houses, of dogs and horses. Karen wore a very simple suit of blue. Her yellow hair was hidden by a grey felt hat adorned by a silk riband. Her face was thin, her skin pale, her expression sombre. She disdained to use any introductory turns of speech and said: “I’ve come to ask you if you know about things. He might have told you first; he didn’t tell me till yesterday. So you don’t know? Well, you couldn’t have done nothing about it either. He’s given away all his money. All the money he had, he’s given to his father. The rest too, that came in by the year, I don’t know how many hundred thousands--he’s refused that too. He kept his claim to just a little,--not much more than to keep from starving, and, by what he told me, he can’t use that the way he wants to. And you know how he is; he won’t change. It’s just like when the sexton’s through ringing the church bell; you can’t get back the sound of the chiming. It makes me feel like screaming, like just lying down and screaming. I says to him: ‘My God, what’ve you gone and done?’ And he made a face, as if he was surprised to see any one get excited over a little thing like that. And now I ask you: Can he do that? Is it possible? Does the law allow it?” Amadeus was quite silent. His face was ashen. Yellow sparks leaped behind his lenses. Twice he passed his hand over his mouth.