THE TERRACE
675
There were vases on some tables, and in each vase a flower.
On the piano was another and very large vase, but empty. Ma–
tilda hated empty vases and was staring at that one, sometimes
uncomfortably.
Arner answered the telephone. It was
his
wife asking
him
not to be late. Arner returned to the terrace and,
his
back to the
street, leaned against the balustrade, for Mrs. Strolheim was not
where he had left her. He thought of the explanations she had
given him about the elasticity of the night, and then he started
making new calculations regarding the beauty mask business.
Again he wondered if the use of such masks would not in the
end produce neuroses.
Matilda hastened to
his
side, speaking very animatedly:
"Don't run away, doctor. I was thinking about the contra–
dictions on this terrace. Don't you agree? There are rugs as in a
bedroom and wild storms too, I would say. But talk to me be–
cause a man dressed in black is looking my way, as if he wanted
to come over. He must be a protestant minister and I don't-like
any kind of priests for dancing. They're too good and I'm afraid
of them. I don't know how to talk to those men."
She had a piece of toast in one hand and her fme small
teeth were making a crunching sound. A sound that habitually
annoyed Arner because in it he heard something like the inner
resonance of the skull. Such an allusion to the non-erotic anatomy
of a woman was an offense to her. However, the crunching
toast did not echo inside Matilda's skull and was not unpleasant.
She offered him the negative and once more Arner looked
at it against the light and remarked that the man was hand–
some. Matilda smiled:
"He wrote me a love letter."
She took a folded paper out of her purse saying that she
had made a copy to send to Bob, since she did not wish to keep
secrets of any kind from him. In the end Bob had not divorced
her. Arner said nothing and Matilda, seeing Miss Slingsby's
chauffeur pass by, recalled his remarks to her as they were danc-
