The Baroness received me cordially, but her melancholy face betrayed grief. Both uncle and father-in-law were there, playing cards with the Baron in an adjoining room. I shook hands with the players, and then returned with the Baroness into the drawing-room. She sat down in an arm-chair underneath the lamp and took up some crochet work. Taciturn, morose, not at all pretty, she left the conversation entirely to me, and since she made no replies, it soon degenerated into a monologue.
I watched her from my chimney comer as she sat with drooping head, bending over her work. Profoundly mysterious, lost in thought, she seemed at times oblivious of my presence. I wondered whether I had called at an inconvenient time, or whether my return to town had really created the unfavourable impression which I had half anticipated. All at once my eyes, travelling round the room, were arrested by a display of her ankles underneath the tablecloth. I beheld her finely-shaped calf, clothed in a white stocking; a gaily embroidered garter belted that charming muscle which turns a man's brain because it stimulates his imagination and tempts him to the construction of the whole of the remaining form. Her arched foot with its high instep was dressed in a Cinderella's slipper.
At the time I took it for an accident, but later on I learned that a woman is always conscious of being looked at when she exhibits more than her ankles. Fascinated by the sight I changed the conversation, and aptly turned it on the subject of my supposed love affair.
She drew herself up, turned towards me, and glanced at me sharply.
"You can at least pride yourself on being a faithful lover!"
My eyes remained riveted on the spot underneath the tablecloth, where the snowy stocking shone below the cherry-coloured ribbon. With an effort I pulled myself together; we looked at each other; her pupils shone large in the lamplight.
"Unfortunately I can!" I replied dryly.
The sound of the falling cards and the exclamations of the players accompanied this brief passage of arms.
A painful silence ensued. She resumed her crochet work, and with a quick movement allowed the skirts to drop over her ankles. The spell was broken. My eyes were gazing at a listless woman, badly dressed. Before another quarter of an hour had gone by I took my leave, pretending that I did not feel well.
As soon as I arrived in my attic I brought out my play, which I had resolved to re-write. Hard work would help me to get over this hopeless love, otherwise bound to end in a crime from which inclination, instinct, cowardice and education made me shrink. And once more I decided to break off these fatal relations.