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her. All of a sudden there were other people around them again, streaming in from all the other halls on a rising tide of noise, staring with derision at her as she stood there half-naked, while the woman screeched: “She stole my beau, she did, that floozie, that adulteress!”
    She didn’t know where to hide or which way to look, for the people were crowding in closer and closer, women looking at her with inquisitive eyes, hissing at her, grasping at her naked body, and now that her reeling gaze looked around for help she suddenly saw her husband standing motionless in the dark frame of the doorway, his right hand concealed behind his back. She screamed and ran away from him, ran through room after room, and the crowd, greedy for sensation, raced along after her. She felt more and more of her dress slip off, she could hardly clutch at it now. Then a door swung open ahead of her, eagerly she rushed down the stairs to save herself, but the terrible woman was waiting at the bottom of the staircase in her woollen skirt, with her claw-like hands outstretched. Irene swerved aside and ran out into the open air, but the other woman came after her, and so they bothchased through the night down long, silent streets, and the street lights, grinning, bent down to greet them. She could hear the woman’s wooden clogs clattering along behind her, but whenever she reached a street corner the woman was there already, leaping out at her, and it was the same again at the next corner, she lay in wait beyond all the houses both to right and to left, always there, terrifyingly multiplied. There was no overtaking her, she always went on ahead and was there first, reaching out for Irene, who felt her knees begin to fail her. At last she saw the house where she lived and raced up to it, but as she wrenched the door open there stood her husband with a knife in his hand, his piercing gaze bent on her. “Where have you been?” he asked in sombre tones. “Nowhere,” she heard herself say, and already she heard the woman’s shrill laughter at her side. “I seen it! I seen it all!” screeched the grinning woman, who was suddenly there with her, laughing like a lunatic. And her husband raised the knife.
    “Help!” she cried out. “Help!”
    She was staring up, and her horrified eyes met her husband’s. What … what was all this? She was in her own room, and the ceiling lamp was on, casting a pale light. She was at home in her bed, she had only been dreaming. But why was her husband sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at her as if she were an invalid? Who had put the light on, why was he sittingthere so rigid and motionless, staring at her so gravely? A shiver of horror ran through her once, and then again. Instinctively, she looked at his hand. No, there was no knife in it. Slowly, the drowsiness of sleep wore off, and so did the images it had brought like glaring flashes of lightning. She must have been dreaming, she must have called out in her dream and woken him. But why was he looking at her with such a serious, penetrating, implacably grave expression?
    She tried to smile. “What … what is it? Why are you looking at me like that? I think I’ve been having a nightmare.”
    “Yes, you called out in a loud voice. I could hear it in the other room.”
    What did I call out, what did I give away, she thought, trembling, what does he know? She hardly dared to look up at him again. But he was gazing gravely down at her with a strange composure.
    “What is it, Irene? There’s something the matter with you. You’ve been so different for the last few days, as if you had a fever, nervous, distracted, and now you cry out for help in your sleep.”
    She tried to smile again. “No,” he persisted. “You mustn’t keep anything from me. Is there something on your mind, is anything troubling you? The whole household has noticed how you’ve changed. You ought to trust me, Irene.”
    He moved a little closer to her, and she felt his