not really blend in with them, that he was all the time the centre and object of the show, but in a different and more unsatisfactory way than before. They were his enemies to a certain extent, he saw it in the malice of their eyes. He heard as if at a distance, with a peculiar dismay, how the fair damsel with the big white hands called him simply by his names—and he felt that she did so in quite a different spirit to that of Doctor Ueberbein when he did the same. She had the right and the permission to do so, in a certain manner, but was nobody here then jealous for his dignity, if he himself was not? It seemed to him that they plucked at his coat, and sometimes in their excitement made wild, sneering remarks about him. A tall, fair young man with pince-nez, with whom he collided while dancing, said quite loud so that everybody could hear it: "Now then, clumsy!" And there was malice in the way in which the fair young maiden, her arm in his and a grin on her lips, whirled round with him till he was ready to drop with giddiness. While they whirled he gazed with swimming eyes at the collar bones showing under the white, rather rough skin on her neck.
They fell; they had gone too hard at it and tumbled when they tried to stop revolving, and over them stumbled a second pair, not entirely by themselves, but rather at a push from the tall young man with pince-nez. There was a scrimmage on the floor, and Klaus Heinrich heard above him in the room the chorus which came back to him from the school-playground when he had ventured on a rather daring joke by way of amusing his fellows—a "Ho, ho, ho!" only it sounded more wicked and bolder here.…
When shortly after midnight, unfortunately a little behind time, Doctor Ueberbein appeared on the threshold of the buffet-room, this is what he saw: His young pupil was sitting alone on the green plush sofa by the left-hand wall, his clothes all disarranged and himself decorated in an
