21

PERHAPS for the first time in the course of the year he had spent with Margot, Albinus was perfectly conscious of the thin, slimy layer of turpitude which had settled on his life. Now, with dazzling distinctness, fate seemed to be urging him to come to his senses; he heard her thunderous summons; he realized what a rare opportunity was being offered him to raise his life to its former level; and he knew, with the lucidity of grief, that if he returned to his wife now, the reconciliation, which under ordinary circumstances would have been impossible, would come about almost of itself.

Certain recollections of that night gave him no peace: he remembered how Paul had suddenly glanced at him with a moist imploring look, and then, turning away, had squeezed his arm slightly. He remembered how, in the mirror, he had had a fleeting glimpse of his wife’s eyes, in which there had been a heart-rending expression—pitiful, hunted—but still akin to a smile.

He pondered over all this with deep emotion. Yes—if he were to go to his little girl’s funeral, he would stay with his wife forever.

He rang up Paul and the maid told him the place and hour of the burial. Next morning he rose, while Margot was still asleep, and ordered the servant to get him his black coat and top hat. After he had hastily swallowed some coffee, he went into Irma’s former nursery—where a long table, with a green net across it, now stood; listlessly he took up a small celluloid ball and let it bounce, but instead of thinking of his child he saw another figure, a graceful, lively, wanton girl, laughing, leaning over the table, one heel raised, as she thrust out her ping-pong bat.

It was time to start. In a few minutes he would be holding Elisabeth under the elbow, in front of an open grave. He threw the little ball on the table and went quickly into the bedroom, in order to see Margot asleep for the last time. And, as he stood by the bed and feasted his eyes on that childish face, with the soft pink lips and flushed cheeks, Albinus remembered their first night together and thought with horror of his future by the side of his pale, faded wife. This future seemed to him like one of those long, dim, dusty passages where one finds a nailed-up box—or an empty perambulator.

With an effort, he turned his eyes away from the sleeping girl, nervously bit his thumbnail and walked to the window. It was thawing. Bright motorcars were splashing their way through the puddles; at the corner a ragged rapscallion was selling violets; an adventurous Alsatian was insistently following a tiny Pekinese, which snarled, turned and slithered at the end of its leash; a great brilliant slice of the rapid blue sky was mirrored in a glass pane which a bare-armed servant girl was washing vigorously.

“Why are you up so early? Where are you going?” asked Margot in a drawling voice broken by a yawn.

“Nowhere,” he said, without turning round.