"But," he remonstrated, "it is my part as the elder and more prudent to spare you any unpleasantness."
She understood nothing, but declared that she was independent and that the lady who kept the pension was accustomed to her suppers.
At last his instinct told him that it was a mistake to stay longer; he rose and took his leave. On his way home, he said to himself, "No, people are not so simple, and cannot be labelled by formulas, for I don't comprehend an atom of this evening or of this woman."
The next time they met it was in a museum. Her outer dress made her look like a young married woman of thirty or more. Her mouth had a tired expression and had fine little wrinkles near it, as is the case with those who laugh often. But she was melancholy, hinted at having had a breach with her father, and spoke of taking her departure shortly. She inquired regarding her friend's relations to theatres and publishers, and offered to help him with advice and influence. To-day she was mere motherly tenderness, and a certain carelessness in her toilet suggested that she did not want to please as a woman.
But when she proposed that they should go to the theatre together he declined, from a feeling that he ought not to compromise her, nor expose himself to danger, for his precarious pecuniary position did not permit him to think of a love affair.
He proposed to her instead that they should go for a stroll together, and she suggested that he should escort her from her new lodging, for she had changed her rooms.
("They have given her notice at the pension, because of me," he thought, but said nothing.)
By this time his curiosity as an author was aroused, and he wished to learn the riddle of this woman, for he had never seen any other change their appearance as she did.
When in the evening he rang at her door, he was shown into a side room and asked to wait. When she was dressed he was let out into the front hall, where they met. This, then, was a new order of things.
They went westward by an empty street which led to the Zoological Gardens, and entered a restaurant which she seemed to know well. In her fur jacket and with a kerchief on her head she looked in the dark like an old woman, and as she stooped somewhat, she seemed to have something witchlike about her. But when they entered the well-lit restaurant, and she laid aside kerchief and jacket she stood revealed all at once in her youthful beauty. A moss-green, tightly fitting dress showed the figure of a girl of eighteen, and with her hair brushed smooth, she looked like an overgrown schoolgirl. He could not conceal his astonishment at this witchery, and looked her all over as though he were seeking a concealed enemy with a searchlight. ("Eros! Now I am lost!" he thought. And from that moment he was indeed.)