“Does the sanctimonious clerk still live here?” asked Daniel, looking up at the crooked old stairway, while a flood of memories came rushing over him.
“Thank God, no!” snarled Philippina. “He’d be the last straw. I feel sick at the stomach when I see a man.”
Daniel again looked into her detestable, ugly, distorted, and wicked face. He was accustomed to question everything, eyes and bodies, about their existence in terms of tones, or their transformation into tones. Here he suddenly felt the toneless; he had the feeling one might have on looking at a deep-sea fish: it is lifeless, toneless. He thought of his Eva; he longed for his Eva. Just then Agnes came out of the door to look for Philippina.
He laid his hand on Agnes’s hair, and said good-naturedly, looking at Philippina: “Well, then—d-e-a-r Philippina, come back home!”
Agnes jerked herself away from him; he looked at the child amazed; he was angry, too. Philippina folded her hands, bowed her head, and murmured with much humility: “Very well, Daniel, we’ll be back to-morrow.”
II
Philippina arrived at the front door at ten o’clock in the morning. In one hand she carried her bundle; by the other she led Agnes, then studying her milieu with uneasy eyes.
Dorothea opened the door. She was neatly and tastefully dressed: she wore a blue gingham dress and a white apron with a lace border. Around her neck was a gold chain, and suspended from the chain a medallion.
“Oh, the children!” she cried cheerfully, “Philippina and Agnes. What do you think of that! God bless you, children. You are home at last.” She wanted to hug Agnes, but the child pulled away from her as timidly as she had pulled away from her father yesterday. In either case, she pulled away!