“Animals are sad as a rule,” she went on. “And when a man is sad—I don’t mean because he has the toothache or has lost some money, but because he sees, for once in a way, how it all is with life and everything, and is sad in earnest—he always looks a little like an animal. He looks not only sad, but more right and more beautiful than usual. That’s how it is, and that’s how you looked, Steppenwolf, when I saw you for the first time.”
“Well, Hermine, and what do you think about this book with a description of me in it?”
“Oh, I can’t always be thinking. We’ll talk about it another time. You can give it me to read one day. Or, no, if I ever start reading again, give me one of the books you’ve written yourself.”
She asked for coffee and for a while seemed absentminded and distraught. Then she suddenly beamed and seemed to have found the clue to her speculations.
“Hullo,” she cried, delighted, “now I’ve got it!”
“What have you got?”
“The foxtrot. I’ve been thinking about it all the evening. Now tell me, have you a room where we two could dance sometimes? It doesn’t matter if it’s small, but there mustn’t be anybody underneath to come up and play hell if his ceiling rocks a bit. Well, that’s fine, you can learn to dance at home.”
“Yes,” I said in alarm, “so much the better. But I thought music was required.”
“Of course it’s required. You’ve got to buy that. At the most it won’t cost as much as a course of lessons. You save that because I’ll give them myself. This way we have the music whenever we like and at the end we have the gramophone into the bargain.”