Bertha’s friends looked for her elsewhere, nowadays, than at her rooms. Tarr was always likely to be found there in impolite possession. She made them come as often as she could; her coquetry as regards her carefully arranged rooms needed satisfaction. She suffered in the midst of her lonely tastefulness. But Tarr had certainly made these rooms a rather deserted place. Since the dance none of her women friends had come. She had spent an hour or two with them at the restaurant.
At the dance she had kept rather apart. Dazed, after a shock, and needing self-collection, was the line sketched. Her account of things could not, of course, be blurted out anyhow. It had to grow out of circumstances. It, of course, must be given. She had not yet given it. But haste must be avoided. For its particular type, as long a time as possible must be allowed to elapse before she spoke of what had happened. It must almost seem as though she were going to say nothing; sudden, perfect, and very impressive silence on her part. To accustom their minds to her silence would make speech all the more imposing, when it came. At a café after the dance her account of the thing flowered grudgingly, drawn forth by the ambient heat of the discussion.
They were as yet at the stage of exclamations, no malveillant theory yet having been definitely formed about Kreisler.
“He came there on purpose to create a disturbance. Whatever for, I wonder!”
“I expect it was the case of Fräulein Fogs over again.” (Kreisler had, on a former occasion, paid his court to a lady of this name, with resounding unsuccess.)
“If I’d have known what was going on, I’d have dealt with him!” said one of the men.
“Didn’t you say he told a pack of lies, Renée⸺?”
Fräulein Lipmann had been sitting, her eyes fixed on a tram drawn up near by, watching the people evacuating the central platform, and others restocking it. The discussion and exclamations of her friends did not, it would appear, interest her. It would have been, no doubt, scandalously unnatural if Kreisler had not been execrated. But anything they could say was negligible and inadequate to cope with the “Gemeine alte Sau.” The tameness of their reflections on and indignation against Kreisler when compared with the terrific corroding of this epithet (known only to her) made her sulky and impatient.
Applied to in this way directly about the lies, she turned to the others and said, as it were interposing herself regally at last in their discussion: