When the driver finally, and in some surprise, asked his strangely-behaved fare where she wanted to go, she simply stared blankly at him for a moment until her confused mind finally succeeded in understanding what he meant. “Oh, to the railway station, the Südbahnhof,” she uttered hastily, and then, as it suddenly occurred to her that the woman might follow, she added, “Quick, quick, please drive fast!”

Only during the drive did she realise how badly the encounter with the woman had shaken her. She felt her hands hanging at her sides, cold and stiff like dead things, and suddenly began trembling so hard that she shook all over. A bitter taste rose in her throat, she felt nausea and at the same time a dull, unfocused fury trying to break convulsively out of her. She would have liked to scream, or lash out with her fists, free herself from the horror of the memory, which was firmly fixed in her mind like a fish hook—that coarse face and scornful laughter, the unpleasant odour of the vulgar woman’s bad breath, the coarse mouth spitting hatred and vile abuse at her, the raised red fist that the creature had shaken menacingly. Her nausea grew stronger and stronger, her gorge rose more and more. In addition, the rapid movement of the car was throwing her back and forth, and she was about to ask the driver to slow down when it occurred to her, just in time, that after giving all her banknotes to her tormentor she might not have enough money left to pay him. She quickly signed to him to stop and suddenly, to the driver’s further surprise, got out. Fortunately she had just enough money to pay what she owed. But now she found herself in a part of town that was strange to her, full of busy people pushing past, their every word and glance physically hurting her. Her knees were weak with fear, her legs unwilling to carry her on, but she had to get home, and summoning up all her energy she made a superhuman effort to walk on from street to street. It was like wading through a swamp, or walking up to the knees in snow. At last she reached her own building, and with nervous haste—although she immediately moderated it so that her uneasiness would not attract attention—she hurried upstairs.

Only now, as the maidservant took her coat, as she heard her little boy playing with his younger sister in the next room, and her glance, reassured, saw her own things all around her, her property and her security, did she recover an outward appearance of calm, although under the surface a wave of agitation was still painfully rolling through her tense breast. She took off her veil, made a strong effort of will and composed her face into a carefree expression, and then went into the dining room, where her husband was sitting at the table laid for supper and reading the newspaper.

“You’re late, my dear Irene, you’re late,” he greeted her in a tone of gentle reproof, and he stood up and kissed her cheek, arousing an instinctive and painful sense of shame in her. They sat down at the table, and as soon as he had put his newspaper aside he asked casually, “Where have you been all this time?”

“Oh … oh, I went to see Amélie … she had some shopping to do, and I went with her,” she told him, angry with her own thoughtlessness for telling her lie so badly. Usually she prepared herself in advance with a carefully invented story that could not be disproved, but in her fear today she had forgotten to devise one, and was forced into this clumsy improvisation. Suppose, she thought, her husband telephoned her friend—there had been a situation like that in the play they had seen at the theatre recently—and asked Amélie whether …

“What’s the matter? You seem so nervous … and why haven’t you taken your hat off?” her husband asked. She jumped with alarm, feeling caught out yet again in her embarrassment, stood up quickly and went to her room to take her hat off. As she did so, she stared at her restless eyes in the mirror until her glance seemed to be steady again. Then she went back to the dining room.

The maid brought in supper, and it turned into an evening like any other, perhaps rather more silent and less companionable than usual, an evening when their conversation was sporadic, listless, often stumbling. Her thoughts kept going back, and always, with a jolt of horror, came up against that moment when she was so terribly close to the woman who had threatened her. Whenever she reached that point she looked up so that she could feel safe, tenderly touching things close to her—a pleasant proximity, this time—each with its own place in the room determined by memory and significance, and she began to feel a little calmer again. And the clock on the wall, its steely pace proceeding in a leisurely manner through the silence, imperceptibly restored to her heart something of its own regular, carefree and secure rhythm.

 

Next morning, when her husband had gone to his chambers and the children were out for a walk, leaving her alone at last, that dreadful encounter lost much of its terror when seen in retrospect and in the cold light of day. Irene reminded herself, first, that her veil had been very thick, so that the woman could not possibly have seen her features in detail, and would never be able to recognise her again. She reflected calmly on all the measures she could take to safeguard herself. She would not on any account visit her lover in his apartment again—which surely meant that there was no imminent possibility of another such attack. There remained only the danger of meeting that woman again by chance, but that too was unlikely, for since she had made her escape in a car her assailant could not have followed her. The woman could not know Irene’s name, or where she lived, and as she would have gained only an indistinct idea of her features Irene need not fear any other kind of reliable identification. But she was armed even against such an extremely improbable case. Freed from the grip of fear, she decided at once that she would simply keep calm, deny everything, coolly claim that there was some mistake and, as no evidence of her visit to her lover could be produced except on the spot, if necessary charge the woman with blackmail.