The boy moaned as if he had been wounded and with the first virile movements of his arms drew the girl to him. Sophie resisted and pushed him away, but from the threshold looked back to him with her big, shaded eyes. Then she was gone. A feeling rose in Christopher as if she had carried the world with her.
He went after her. When he passed the card players, he straightened himself out so as to look all the taller, all the more manly. He could not help smiling: they knew nothing. Nobody knew anything. He and Sophie were alone in the secret and that felt just like holding her in his arms among people who could not see.
They were still dancing in the drawing-room. Sophie danced with Ignace Hold. Christopher could not quite understand how she could do such a thing now. And she looked as if she had forgotten everything. Nothing showed on her features, nothing. Women are precious comedians.
He looked at Hold. He turned with the girl in the usual little circle. His short round nose shone. He breathed through his mouth. The points of his boots turned up. On his waistcoat a big cornelian horse’s head dangled, just on the spot where one of the buttons strained. “He is sure to unbutton that one under the table.” Christopher felt inclined to laugh. Then suddenly he thought of something else; he heard someone talk behind his back. He began to listen.
“I should not mind giving him my daughter,” said Ferdinand Müller; “he is wealthy and a God-fearing man. Those Hosszu people are lucky. They are completely ruined. Miss Sophie isn’t quite young neither.”
Christopher smiled proudly, contemptuously. They knew nothing. He sought for Sophie’s glance to find in it a sign of their union, their mutual possession, from which all others were excluded.
But the girl was no longer among the dancers. Her absence made everything meaningless. He had to think of the quiet little room. “Our room” ... and he went toward it. He stopped dead in the door. Sophie was standing there now too, just as before, on the same spot. In front of her Mr. Hold. Christopher saw it clearly. He saw even the tight button, the carved horse’s head on his waistcoat. Yet it appeared to him an awful hallucination. The horse’s head dangled and touched Sophie. Ignace Hold raised himself to the tip of his toes. He kissed the girl’s lips.
Something went amiss in Christopher’s brain. He wanted to shriek, but his voice remained a ridiculous groan. The floor sank a little and then jumped up with a jerk. He felt sick as if he had been hit in the stomach. With stiff jerky steps he re-crossed the rooms; he looked like a drowning man seeking for something to cling to. In the drawing-room he smiled with his lips drawn to one side.
“I have a headache,” he said in the ante-room to Müller the chemist.
When he reached the street, he began to run. He was in a hurry to get to the Danube. He rushed unconsciously through a narrow lane. Under the corner lamp he collided with something; he ran into a soft warm body. His hat fell off.