It was for them that she deliberately displayed her crudest and most ugly qualities, because — as she liked to put it — they would come crawling to her anyway.

When the two friends came in, she was lying on her bed as usual, smoking and reading.

Törless, still standing in the doorway, greedily devoured the image of her with his eyes.

‘My goodness, what dear little boys have we here?’ she cried mockingly as they came in, studying them with some contempt. ‘Eh, Baron? What’ll Mama have to say about this?’ The welcome was typical of her.

‘That’s enough ... !’ mumbled Beineberg and sat down beside her on the bed. Törless sat down further away; he was irritated because Božena was paying him no attention and acting as though she didn’t know him.

Visits to this woman had recently become his sole, secret pleasure. Towards the end of the week he would become restless, and couldn’t wait for Sunday when he crept to see her in the evening. His chief preoccupation was the fact that he had to creep in. What would have happened, for example, if it had occurred to the young drunk in the taproom just now to come after him? Just for the sake of giving the depraved young gentleman something to think about? He was no coward, but he knew that he was defenceless here. His dainty sword was a joke compared to those rough fists. And then there was the shame and punishment that he could expect! His only options would be either to run or to beg for mercy. Or ask Božena to protect him. The thought made him shiver. But that was it! Just that! Nothing else! That fear, that abandonment of himself lured him afresh each time. Stepping out of a privileged position to be among the common people; among them - no, lower than them!

He was not depraved. When it came down to it, what predominated was his repugnance at the act, and anxiety about the possible consequences. It was only his imagination that had been taken in an unhealthy direction. When the days of the week laid themselves leadenly over his life, one by one, those caustic enticements began to tempt him. A peculiar seduction formed out of the memories of his visits. Božena appeared to him as a creature of incredible degradation, and his relationship with her, the sensations that he had to undergo, seemed like a cruel cult of self-sacrifice. It thrilled him to have to leave behind everything that normally enclosed him, his privileged position, the thoughts and feelings inculcated in him, everything that gave him nothing and oppressed him. It thrilled him to flee, naked, stripped of everything, racing madly to that woman.

This was much the same as it is with young people in general. If Božena had been pure and beautiful, and if he had been capable of love in those days, he might have bitten her, heightening both her lust and his own to the point of pain. For the first passion of the adolescent boy is not love of one, but hatred for all. That sense of being misunderstood, of not understanding the world, not only goes hand in hand with the first passion, but is also its only non-arbitrary cause. And it too is a form of flight, in which two people’s togetherness means only the duplication of their solitude.

Almost every first passion lasts only a short while and leaves a bitter aftertaste. It is a mistake, a disappointment. Afterwards one doesn’t understand oneself, and doesn’t know whom to blame. This is because the relationships between the protagonists in this drama are largely arbitrary: they are chance companions in flight. Once things have calmed down they no longer recognize one another. They become aware of oppositions between themselves, because they are no longer aware of what they have in common.

The only reason that things were different for Törless was that he was alone. The ageing, degraded prostitute was unable to release all the forces within him.