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for the first time since that second encounter. The woman might be lying in wait anywhere out there. Instinctively, she took her husband’s arm, closed her eyes, and quickly walked the few steps from the pavement to the waiting motor car, but then, as she sat beside her husband while the car raced through the empty nocturnal streets, the weight fell from her mind, and as she climbed the steps up to the house they were visiting she knew she was safe. For a few hours she could be the woman she had been for many long years—carefree and happy. Indeed, she felt the intensified, conscious joy of a prisoner leaving the walls of the dungeon and returning to the light of day. There was a rampart against all persecution here, hatred could not come in,everyone here loved, respected and honoured her. She saw her friends, well-dressed people who spoke to her without any ulterior motive, who were bathed in the sparkling glow of the fires of cheerfulness, performing a round dance of enjoyment that, at long last, included her again. For now, as she came in, she felt from the glances turned on her by the other guests that she was beautiful, and she became yet more beautiful through being aware of their admiration after being deprived of it. How good it felt after all those days of silence, when she had felt the sharp ploughshare of that one idea cutting fruitlessly and repeatedly through her brain, while everything in her seemed to be sore and injured—oh, how good it was to hear flattering words again! They revived her like electric sparks crackling beneath her skin, rousing her blood. She stood and stared, something was vibrating restlessly inside her, trying to get out. And all of a sudden she knew it was her imprisoned laughter that wanted to be free. It popped out like a champagne cork, pealing in musical little coloraturas, she laughed and laughed, now and then feeling ashamed of her bacchanalian high spirits, but laughing again next moment. Electricity flashed from her relaxed nerves, all her senses were strong, healthy, stimulated. For the first time in days she ate with real appetite again, and she drank like a woman dying of thirst.
    Her desiccated soul, yearning for human company, was absorbing all the life and enjoyment that it could. Music in the next room tempted her, moving far into her beneath her burning skin. The dancing began, and without knowing how she found herself in the middle of the milling throng. She danced as she had never danced in her life before. The circling eddies of the dance cast all her melancholy out of her, the rhythm infected her limbs, breathing ardent movement into her body. If the music stopped she felt that the silence was painful, the snake of restlessness darted its tongue at her quivering limbs, and she flung herself back into the eddies as if into a bath of cool, soothing water that bore her up. She had never been more than an average dancer before, she was too measured, too thoughtful, too cautious and firm in her movements, but this frenzy of liberated delight did away with all physical inhibitions. A steely band of bashful circumspection that usually held her wildest passions in check now broke apart, and she was out of control, restless, her mind blissfully melting away. She felt arms and hands around her, touching and disappearing again, she sensed the breath of spoken words, the tingling of laughter, music flickering in her blood, her whole body was tense, so tense that the clothes on her back were burning, and she would have liked to tear them all off spontaneously, so that she could dance naked and sense this intoxicating frenzy even deeper inside her.
    “Irene, what’s the matter?” She turned around, swaying, laughter in her eyes, still heated from the embrace of her dancing partner. Her husband’s cold, hard look of astonishment struck her to the heart. She was alarmed. Had she danced too wildly? Had her frenzy given anything away?
    “What … what do you mean, Fritz?” she