“How is Herr Volker? Is he out of Paris?” Fräulein Lipmann asked him when they met. “Come round and see us.”
People’s actual or possible proceedings formed in very hard-and-fast mould in Kreisler’s mind, seen not with realism, but through conventions of his suspicious irony. This solicitude as to Volker he contrasted with their probable indifference as regards his old, shabby, and impolite self.
But he went round, his reception being insipid. He had shown no signs of animation or interest in them. Both he and the ladies were rather doubtful as to why he came at all. No pleasure resulted on either side from these visits, yet they doggedly continued. A distinct and steady fall in the temperature could be observed. He sneered, as though the aimlessness of his visits were an insult that had at last been taken up. They would have been for ever discontinued except for a sudden necessity to reopen that channel of bourgeois intercourse.
CHAPTER V
On the first day of his letter being overdue, a convenient way of counting, Otto rose late, from a maze of shallow dreams, and was soon dressed, wanting to get out of his room.
As the clock struck one he slammed his door and descended the stairs alertly. The concierge, on the threshold of her “loge,” peered up at him.
“Good morning, Madame Leclerc; it’s a fine day,” said Kreisler, in his heavy French, his cold direct gaze incongruously ornamented by a cheerful smile.
“Monsieur has got up late this morning,” replied the concierge, with very faint amiability.