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She glanced back across her shoulder to reassure Swithin. "It is a friend," she said. Swithin looked at Rozsi her eyes were bright, her lips tremulous. He slipped his hand along the table and touched her fingers. Then she flashed a look at him appeal, reproach, tenderness, all were expressed in it. Was she expecting him to dance?
Passers-by lifted their faces, then vanished into the crowd; Rozsi stood gazing at them spellbound, as if their very going and coming were a delight. The space was soon full of whirling couples. Rozsi's head began to beat time. "O Margit!" she whispered. Swithin's face had assumed a solemn, uneasy expression. A man raising his hat, offered his arm to Margit.
Kasteliz had fixed his glowing eyes on her; Boleskey, nodding his head, was staring at the floor; Margit, with a pale face, stood like a statue. 'What can they see in it? thought Swithin; 'it's not a tune. He took up his hat. Rozsi saw him and stopped; her lips had parted with a faintly dismayed expression. His sense of personal injury diminished; he even felt a little sorry for her.
He burned with a perverse rage, as if all the passions in him were simmering and ready to boil over; it was as if a poison were trying to work its way out of him, through the layers of his stolid flesh. He maintained a dogged silence; Rozsi, too, said nothing, but when they reached the door, she drew her hand away. "You are angry!" she said. "Angry," muttered Swithin; "no!
She would pay for dressing, with that supple figure, fluffy hair, and little hands! And instantly his own hands, face, and clothes disturbed him. He got up, examined the pistols on the wall, and felt resentment at the faded, dusty room. 'Smells like a pot-house! he thought. He sat down again close to Rozsi. "Do you love to dance?" she asked; "to dance is to live.
Rozsi held back from him, swayed forward and buried her face on his breast.... Half an hour later Swithin was pacing up and down his room. The scent of rose leaves had not yet died away. A glove lay on the floor; he picked it up, and for a long time stood weighing it in his hand. All sorts of confused thoughts and feelings haunted him.
"Hier ist meine Frau!" A battered-looking woman came hurrying down the passage, calling out in German, "Don't let him go!" With a snarling sound the shoemaker turned his back, and shambled off. The woman furtively thrust a letter into Swithin's hand, and furtively waited. The letter was from Rozsi. "Forgive me" it ran "that I leave you and do not say goodbye.
Rozsi wore a rather short skirt of black stuff, a white shirt, and across her shoulders an embroidered yoke; her sister was dressed in dark green, with a coral necklace; both girls had their hair in plaits. After a minute Rozsi touched the sleeve of his hurt arm. "It's nothing!" muttered Swithin. "Father fought with a chair, but you had no chair," she said in a wondering voice.
'This is what comes of interfering, he thought sulkily; 'I might have had my neck broken! Suddenly a soft palm was placed in his, two eyes, half-fascinated, half-shy, looked at him; then a voice called, "Rozsi!" the door was slammed, he was alone again with the Hungarian, harassed by a sense of soft disturbance.
Seeing Rozsi they broke into exclamations of relief, and Kasteliz, with a glance at Swithin, put his lips to her hand. Rozsi's look said, "Wouldn't you like to do that?" Swithin turned short on his heel, and walked away. All night he hardly slept, suffering from fever, for the first time in his life.
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