So Kreisler and she walked up the street as though compelled by some very strange circumstances, only, to be in each other’s company.
He appeared depressed, and to have come also under the spell of some sort of meaningless duty. His punctuality suggested, too, fatigued and senseless waiting, careful timing. His temporary destination reached, he delivered himself up indifferently into her hands. He said something about its being hot. They said hardly anything, but walked on away from her house. They showed no pudeur about this peculiar state of mind and their manners.
Before they got to the Café de l’Observatoire Kreisler was attempting to make up for his lapse into strangeness, discovering, however, in a little, that he had not been alone.
Bertha looked at the clock inside as they took up their place on the quieter terrasse. When she asked herself how long she would stop she was astonished.
“Who is that, then?” Kreisler asked, after some moments of gradually changing silence, when Anastasya began to be mentioned by Bertha. He showed no interest.
This meeting had been the only event of the day for him. He had looked forward to it a little at first. But as it approached he got fidgety, began counting the time, and from being a blessed something, it became a burden. The responsibility of this meeting even seemed too much for him. He began to ask himself what useless errand he was on now? The effort of this simple affair worked lamentably on his nerves. He would not have gone, only the appointment being made and fixed in his mind, and he having felt it in the distance all day, he knew it would irk him more if he did not go. He was compelled, in short, to go, to have done with it. The worrying obsession of not having done it intimidated him. In the empty evening he would have been at the mercy of this thing-not-done, like an itch.
Bertha, for her part, recovered. Kreisler’s complete abstraction and indifference were soothing. He seemed to know as little why he was there as she, or less, and be only waiting for her to disappear again. No slight was implied. Her vanity stirred a little. She perhaps came through this to bring Fräulein Vasek on the boards as she had originally intended. As to there being anything compromising in this meeting, that might be disposed of. He did not look like suggesting another.—His manner on the day before would not have warranted complete calm. And Elsa’s description of his conduct with women had stuck in her mind. As the hour of meeting approached it helped her uneasiness. But now she felt refreshingly relieved. This was the man who had caused her fresh misgivings! When a dog or cow has passed a trembling child without any signs of mischief, the child sometimes is inclined to step after it and put forth a caressing hand.
By his manner and its reflection on her feelings he had created a situation not unlike that of the dance night. There they sat, she pressing a little, he civilly apathetic. It seemed for all the world as though Bertha had run after him somewhere and forced a meeting on him, to which he had grudgingly come. She was back in what would always be for him her characteristic rôle. And so now—and again later continually—she appeared to be following him up, to the discomfort of both, for some unguessable reason.
“No, I don’t know who you mean,” he said, replying to descriptions of Anastasya. “A tall girl you say? No, I can’t bring to mind⸺”