He got up silently and slipped out of the box, reeling slightly like a man who has been struck a heavy blow.

Though he could not sit next to her he still could not leave the theatre in which she sat; so he descended the great stair, crossed to the other side of the auditorium and, with his coat on, stepped through one of the doors and stood at the side of the stalls in the shadow of the balcony. No one would be able to see him there, he thought, so he would remain until the act came to an end and then slip out before the lights went up. From there, too, he could gaze at Adrienne whom he had not seen for more than a year: and even then it had been a mere glance from afar.

She did not seem changed. Maybe her face was a little thinner, perhaps there was a trace of bitterness about the lines of her mouth, but she was still supremely beautiful, every aspect of her as lovely as when she had been his love, his friend, his companion in body and spirit, in those days when they had planned to become husband and wife. But an implacable fate had separated them.

In his imagination he saw her stripped of that shining metallic gown, bright as a suit of armour, standing naked before him as she first had five long years before in Venice, then so often afterwards in their little hut in the forest, or at the Uzdy villa, or at her father’s house at Mezo-Varjas, or in Budapest, indeed anywhere their homeless love could find refuge. Balint’s heart contracted with bitterness when he thought once again of how he had been forced to abandon her and how she had ordered him to marry Lili Illesvary whom she herself had picked out for him.

Adrienne had then made her conditions: their affair must cease, and she would not even meet him socially unless he got married and so erected a barrier between them. He had found he could not comply and so they had not seen each other again.

The love duet continued, growing ever more intense, more impassioned. For a moment its message of love and desire was overshadowed by two brief echoes deep in the orchestral texture of the music with which the Shinto priest had cursed the lovers’ happiness; and when he heard it Balint felt most poignantly that it symbolized the story of their own doomed love. However this sad reflection did not last long, for that song of yearning flowed out from the stage, stronger than ever, irresistible and triumphant. It was as if the whole wide world was composed of spring and moonlight, blossom and sublime melody. As the music mounted to its stormy climax Balint felt as moved and shattered as by the climax of love. It was the music of their past, now forever denied them.

The curtain fell to a tornado of applause, and Balint slipped quietly out.

The October night air was already cold. The sky was clear and the pavements glistened from the light rain that had fallen that afternoon. Without thinking where he was going Balint started to walk towards the centre of the town. He walked at random, with no object except to be alone, alone with the torment of all those thoughts by which he had been assailed that evening. Glancing at his watch he saw that it was just a quarter past nine. This gave him nearly three hours of freedom, for at midnight he was expected to go to supper at the house of the Prefect, who, as general director of the Kolozsvar theatres, was giving a party after the performance in honour of the French diva. For three hours, then, he could try to walk off his chagrin, to master that surge of bitterness that had been stirred up by the sight of Adrienne sitting so close to him.

As he wandered aimlessly along the dark streets he was assailed so fiercely by a torrent of haphazard memories that he felt like a man pursued by the Fates from whom it was impossible to hide. And yet hide he must! It had been the same the previous summer, on the only other occasion that he had seen Adrienne since their parting.

Then he had just been leaving the hospital, after bringing in one of the stable lads from Denestornya, when he caught sight of Adrienne through the bars of a tall iron fence. He had shrunk back into the shade of the doorway so that he shouldn’t be seen; but from there he followed her with his eyes as, with head held high and looking straight ahead of her without a glance to left or right, she strode determinedly up the path which led to the lunatic asylum or, as most people euphemistically called it, the House with the Green Roof.

Off to see that mad husband, Balint had thought bitterly, he whom she had never loved and who had never loved her.

His heart had swelled, like that of an exile who catches a glimpse of his forbidden home from far away.

As he had hidden then, so he felt impelled to run now, to escape from the theatre and wander anonymously through the town. Without realizing where he had been heading Balint found himself in the main square, and here he was almost overcome by a strange lassitude. It was as if that impulse which had hurled him out of the theatre had sapped all his reserves of energy.

He walked on, without taking note of where he was going, until, at the corner of the market place, he almost knocked over the charcoal grill of an old woman roasting chestnuts. Ashamed of himself, he stopped and in an attempt to pull himself together, and to make amends for his clumsiness, he bought a paper cone of nuts that the woman held out to him. As he started absentmindedly to peel them he remembered that he had been invited out to supper and had better not arrive with stained fingers. Abruptly he shoved the warm paper cone deep into one of his coat pockets, deciding to give it to the first child he might meet; but although he passed several hanging about near the iron bridge or in front of the cinema, by then the chestnuts had been forgotten.

Of course, he reflected, he ought to have married Lili Illesvary. Everything would then have been different. He could have met Adrienne and, with no constraint between them, talked of their by now shadowy past in a way that could provoke no comment if overheard. They could have met as old friends, if nothing more. At least it would have meant that he would have seen her from time to time and touched her hand as he kissed her fingers.