Not for nothing was Irene the wife of one of the best-known defence lawyers in the capital city; she knew enough from his conversations with professional colleagues to be aware that attempted blackmail had to be nipped in the bud immediately and in the most ruthless way, because any hesitation on the part of the intended victim, any appearance of being ill at ease, would only increase the blackmailer’s sense of superiority.

Her first precaution was to write her lover a brief letter telling him that she could not come at the agreed time tomorrow, or indeed for the next few days. On reading through her note, in which she disguised her handwriting for the first time, it struck her as rather frosty in tone, and she was about to replace the offending terms with something more intimate when the memory of yesterday’s encounter suddenly showed her that the coolness expressed in her lines was the unconscious result of lively if subliminal animosity. Her pride was injured by the embarrassing discovery that she had replaced such a base, unworthy predecessor in her lover’s affections, and reading her letter again in a more resentful mood, she felt vengeful satisfaction in the cold clarity with which it showed that her visits to him depended, so to speak, on her own good humour.

She had met the young man, a pianist of some renown in what was admittedly still a small circle, at an evening entertainment, and soon, without really meaning to and almost without realising it, she had become his lover. Nothing in her blood had really responded to him, nothing sensual, let alone intellectual, had brought her body together with his; she had given herself to him without needing or really even desiring him very much, out of a certain apathetic lack of resistance to his will, and a kind of restless curiosity. Nothing in her had made taking a lover a necessity to her—neither her desires, which were perfectly well satisfied by marital life, nor the feeling so frequently found in women that their intellectual interests are withering away. She was perfectly happy with a prosperous husband whose intellect was superior to hers, two children, contentedly and even lazily at ease in her comfortable, calm, middle-class existence. But a kind of languor in the air may arouse sensuality just as sultry or stormy weather can, a sense of temperate happiness can be more provocative than outright unhappiness, and for many women their contentment itself proves more disastrous than enduring dissatisfaction in a hopeless situation. Satiety can be as much of an incitement as hunger, and it was the very safety and security of Irene’s existence that made her feel curious and ready for an adventure. There was no opposition anywhere in her life. She met with soft acceptance in all quarters, concern for her well-being, affection, mild love and domestic respect, and without understanding that such moderation of feeling did not arise from anything outside her, but reflected an absence of deeply felt relationships, in some vague way she felt cheated of real life by her own comfort.

Her first girlish dreams of ecstasy and a great love, lulled by the calm friendship of her first years of marriage and the playful delights of becoming a young mother, were beginning to revive now that she was approaching the age of thirty. And like any woman she believed herself capable of great passion, although her desire for experience did not go hand-in-hand with the courage to pay the true price of an adventure, which is danger. When, at this time of a contented serenity that she could not enhance for herself, the young man approached her with ardent and obvious desire, entering her bourgeois world with all the romantic aura of his art around him—while other men merely paid respectful court to her, praising her as a ‘beautiful lady’, and indulged in mild flirtations without really desiring her as a woman—she felt deeply intrigued for the first time since her girlhood days. Perhaps all that really attracted her to him was a touch of grief lying like a shadow on his rather too interestingly arranged features. She was not to know that in fact it was something he had learnt, like the technical aspects of his art and the sad, thoughtful melancholy with which he would play an impromptu that he had composed in his head well in advance. To Irene, who in the usual way felt that she was entirely surrounded by the complacent bourgeoisie, this melancholy suggested the idea of a more rarefied world, one that she had glimpsed graphically depicted in books and that moved her romantically at the theatre, and she instinctively leant out past the confines of her everyday feelings to observe it. Spellbound, she paid him a compliment on the spur of the moment, perhaps expressing it more warmly than was proper. It made him look up from the keyboard at the speaker, and that first glance reached out to her. She was alarmed, and at the same time felt the pleasures of alarm. A conversation in which everything appeared to be illuminated and stoked by fires only just under the surface occupied her mind, intriguing her already lively curiosity so much that she did not avoid another meeting at a public recital. After that they saw each other quite often, and before long it was not by chance. A few weeks later, the delightful idea that she, who had never before thought highly of her musical judgement, correctly judging her appreciation of art to be minimal, meant so much to a real artist like him—for he kept assuring her that she was the one who really understood him and could advise him—caused her to agree rather too quickly when he said he would like to play his latest composition to her and her alone. The intentions behind this proposition had perhaps been half-genuine, but they were lost amidst kisses, and it ended with her surprised surrender to him. Her first feeling was one of alarm at this unexpected turn taken by their relationship, moving it into the sensual sphere. The mysterious thrill that had surrounded it was abruptly dispelled, and when her conscience pricked her for committing this unplanned act of adultery, it was only partly assuaged by the tingling sense of vanity in having for the first time defied the bourgeois world in which she lived and as she thought by her own decision. Her horror at her own wickedness, which alarmed her for the first few days, became a source of heightened pride. But these mysterious emotions too were felt at their full strength only at first. Beneath the surface, her instincts resisted this man, and most of all what was new in him, the difference that had in fact aroused her curiosity. The extravagance of his clothing, the gypsy way in which he lived, the irregularity of his financial situation, always swinging between extravagance and embarrassment, were alien to her bourgeois mind. Like most women, she wanted to see an artist as very romantic from a distance, and very well conducted in personal relationships, a fascinating beast of prey, but kept safely behind the iron bars of morality. The passion that intoxicated her in his playing of the piano made her uneasy when they were physically close; she did not really like his sudden, masterful embraces, and instinctively compared their self-willed ruthlessness with the milder ardour of her husband, who was still reticent and respectfully considerate of her even after their years together.