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to feel ashamed of her outburst, she has laid her head on the table. But she still breaks into fresh tears again and again, wave after wave of them shaking her slender body up to her shoulders, and each of these abrupt fits of weeping makes the glass and china clink. As for me, I stand there at a loss, my thoughts frozen like ice, with my collar constricting my throat like a burning cord.
    “I’m sorry,” I finally stammer in an undertone, and while both ladies are busy with the sobbing girl—neither of them spares me a glance—I retreat, feeling dizzy, into the hall beyond. No one here seems to have noticed anything yet. Couples are circling with verve on the dance floor, and I have to hold on to the doorpost, because the room is going round and round before my eyes. What happened? Have I done something wrong? My God, did I drink too much and too fast at dinner, did I drink enough to stupefy me and make me commit some silly blunder?
    The music stops, the couples move apart. The district administrator who is Ilona’s partner relinquishes her hand with a bow, and I immediately hurry over to her and make the surprised girl go over to the window with me. “Please help me! For Heaven’s sake, help me, explain!”
    Obviously Ilona was expecting me to whisper something amusing to her when I took her aside, for suddenly her glance is unfriendly. I must have looked either pitiable or alarming in my agitation. My pulse beats fast as I tell her everything. And strange to say, she cries out with the same sheer horror in her eyes as the girl in the other room.
    “Are you out of your mind? … Don’t you know? … Didn’t you notice? …”
    “No,” I stammer, shattered by these fresh and equally incomprehensible signs of horror. “Didn’t I notice what? And I don’t know anything—this is the first time I’ve been in this house.”
    “But didn’t you see that Edith is … is lame? Didn’t you notice her poor crippled legs? She can’t drag herself two paces without crutches, and then you … you callous …” (here she quickly suppresses some angry term for me). “Then you ask the poor girl to dance … oh, how dreadful! I must go straight to her.”
    “No”—and in my desperation I clutch Ilona’s arm—“just a moment, one moment … you must give her my apologies for everything. I couldn’t guess … I’d only seen her sitting at the dinner table, just for a second … please explain that …”
    But Ilona, with anger in her eyes, has already freed her arm and is on her way to the other room. I stand in the doorway of the salon, my throat tight, the taste of sickness in my mouth. All around me there is dancing, couples circling on the floor, chattering voices as the guests talk and laugh in a carefree way that is suddenly more than I can bear. Another five minutes, I think, and everyone will know about my folly. Five more minutes, and then scornful, disapproving, ironic glances will be cast at me from all sides, and tomorrow the story of my rough, clumsy behaviour, passed on by a hundred mouths, will be the talk of the whole town, delivered at back doors with the milk, retold in the servants’ quarters, reaching the cafés and offices. Tomorrow my regiment will know about it.
    At that moment, as if through a mist, I see the girl’s father. He is crossing the salon with a rather anxious expression—does he know already? Is he on his way towards me? No—oh, if I can only avoid him now! I am suddenly in panic terror of him,of everyone. And without really knowing what I am doing, I stumble to the door leading into the front hall, and so out of this infernal house.
    “Are you leaving us already, sir?” asks the surprised servant, with a look of respectful incredulity.
    “Yes,” I reply, and take fright to hear the word come out of my mouth. Do I really want to leave? Next moment, as he takes my coat off the hook where it is hanging, I realise that by running away now I am committing another stupid and