"Forgive me," he said, "I didn't mean to touch those things irreverently."
She stroked his arm softly, thus dumbly asking forgiveness in her turn.
"But now," she continued, "I am equipped once more, and when he comes to-morrow—"
"So he's coming to-morrow?"
"Naturally, … then you will see how I'll send him home sorely whipped … I can defeat him with Kant's antinomies alone…. And when it comes to what people call 'revelation,' well! … But I assure you, my dear one, I'm not very happy defending this icy, nagging criticism…. To be quite sincere, I would far rather be on his side. Warmth is there and feeling and something positive to support one. Would you like some tea?"
"Thanks, no, but some brandy."
Rapidly brushing the waves of hair from her drawn forehead she ran into the next room and returned with the bottle bearing three stars on its label from which she herself took a tiny drop occasionally—"when my mind loses tone for study" as she was wont to say in self-justification.
A crimson afterglow, reflected from the walls of the houses opposite, filled the little drawing-room in which the mass of feminine ornaments glimmered and glittered.
"I've really become quite a stranger here," he thought, regarding all these things with the curiosity of one who has come after an absence. From each object hung, like a dewdrop, the memory of some exquisite hour.
"You look about you so," Alice said with an undertone of anxiety in her voice, "don't you like it here any longer?"