Tarr was in the studio or salon. It was a complete bourgeois-bohemian interior. Green silk cloth and cushions of various vegetable and mineral shades covered everything, in mildewy blight. The cold, repulsive shades of Islands of the Dead, gigantic cypresses, grottos of Teutonic nymphs, had invaded this dwelling. Purple metal and leather steadily dispensed with expensive objects. There was the plaster east of Beethoven (some people who have frequented artistic circles get to dislike this face extremely), brass jars from Normandy, a photograph of Mona Lisa (Tarr hated the Mona Lisa).
A table just by the window, laid with a white cloth, square embroidered holes at its edges, was where Tarr at once took up his position. Truculence was denoted by his thus going straight to his eating-place.
Installed in the midst of this ridiculous life, he gave a hasty glance at his “indifference” to see whether it were safe and sound. Seen through it, on opening the door, Bertha had appeared unusual. This impressed him disagreeably. Had his rich and calm feeling of bounty towards her survived the encounter, his “indifference” might also have remained intact.
He engrossed himself in his sense of physical well-being. From his pocket he produced a tin box containing tobacco, papers, and a little steel machine for rolling cigarettes given him by Bertha. A long slim hinged shell, it nipped in a little cartridge of tobacco, which it then slipped with inside a paper tube, and slipping out again empty, the cigarette was made.
Tarr began manufacturing cigarettes. Reflections from the shining metal in his hand scurried about amongst the bilious bric-à-brac. Like a layer of water lying on one of oil, the light heated stretch by the windows appeared distinct from the shadowed part of the room.
This place was cheap and dead, but rich with the same lifelessness as the trees without. These looked extremely near and familiar at the opened windows, breathing the same air continually as Bertha. But they were dusty, rough, and real.
Bertha came in from the kitchen. She went on with a trivial rearrangement of her writing-table. This had been her occupation as he appeared at the gate beneath, drawing her ironical and musing eye from his image to himself. A new photograph of Tarr was being placed on her writing-table flush with the window. Ten days previously it had been taken in that room. It had ousted a Klinger and generally created a restlessness, to her eye, in the other objects.
“Ah, you’ve got the photographs, have you?—Is that me?”
She handed it to him.
“Yes, they came yesterday!”