“Twenty-five francs for what? With you—it would be robbery! Twenty-five francs to be your audience while you drivel about art? Keep your money and buy Bertha an—efficient chimpanzee! She will need it if she marries you!”
Her mouth drawn tight and her hands in her coat pockets, she walked out of the door of the café.
Tarr ordered another drink.
“It’s like a moral tale told on behalf of Bertha,” he thought. That was the temper of Paradise! The morality, in pointing to Bertha, did her no good, but caused her to receive the trop-plein of his discontent.
He sat in a grim sulk at the thought of the good time he had lost. This scene had succeeded in touching the necessary spring. His vanity helping, for half an hour he plotted his revenge and satisfaction together. Anastasya had violently flung off the illusion of indifference in which she had hitherto appeared to him. The drinks of the evening were a culture in which his disappointment grew luxuriantly, but with a certain buffoonish lightness. He went back to his studio in half an hour’s time with smug, thick, secretive pleasure settling down on his body’s ungainly complaints.
CHAPTER III
He went slowly up the stairs feeling for his key. He arrived at the door without having found it. The door was ajar. At first this seemed natural to him, and he continued the search for the key. Then he suddenly dropped that occupation, pushed the door open and went into his studio. The moonlight came heavily through the windows. In a part of the room where it did not strike he became aware of an apparition of solid white. It was solid white flowed round by Naples yellow. It crossed into the moonlight and faced him, its hands placed like a modest statue’s. The hair reached below the waist, and flowed to the right from the head. This tall nudity began laughing with a harsh sound like stone laughing.
“Close the door!” it shouted, “there’s a draught. You took a long time to consider my words. I’ve been waiting. Forgive me, Tarr. My words were acidulated whores, but my heart”—she put her hand on the skin roughly above that organ—“my heart was completely full of sugar! The acidulated demi-mondaine was a trick. It occupied your mind. You didn’t notice me take your key!”
His vanity was soothed. The key in her possession, which could only have been taken in the café, seemed to justify the harsh dialogue.