As far as I could understand, as I dressed myself, the house had been turned into a perfect lazaretto for the same class of fallen after dinner as myself, and among them I noticed, with a kind of revengeful joy, Gram the clerk, my hump-backed mischievous neighbour.

Senor Martinez made known to me, by all kinds of spirited gesticulations, that dancing was now going on briskly, and that I must join the dancers.

The thought that Susanna must have come long ago, and must have been waiting in vain, shot like lightning through my mind.  How I could have forgotten her, though even for an instant, was a riddle; but the fact that I had done so weighed heavily upon me.

The dining-room was now transformed into a ball-room, and dancing had already been going on merrily for several hours to the sound of violin, clarionet, and violoncello.  At an opportune moment, in the middle of a dance, I slipped in unnoticed.

At first, as I stood in my tight white kid gloves, pale and embarrassed, down by the open door through which the heat streamed out into the cold passage like a mist, I suffered very much from the feeling that every one would look at me and remember my unseemly behaviour.

Couple after couple glided past, so near that the ladies’ dresses touched me, and gradually I began, as far as my near sight would allow, to find my bearings in the room.

The minister’s wife sat on the sofa, farthest up among some elderly ladies, in earnest conversation with the little bald doctor.

The minister was probably playing cards downstairs; but of Susanna I saw nothing.

At the upper end of the room, young Martinez, with a beaming face, was just dancing a polka with a strikingly beautiful girl dressed in white, with a fluttering blue ribbon round her waist.  She had thick beautiful hair of a shade nearly golden, with a large silver pin like a dart run through it, and a light wreath.  The lady was taller and fuller in figure than Susanna, but with a certain grace that reminded me of her.  The light, almost fashionably delicate way in which she placed her small feet in dancing—­it was as though she floated—­also resembled Susanna, and I therefore followed the pair with unconscious interest.

My short sight prevented me from distinguishing well, and as they passed me, the lady’s bent head was hidden by her own arm, which rested confidingly on the shoulder of the evidently happy Martinez.  What I saw was only a broad, pure, innocent brow, which could belong to but one person in the world, and that an escaped lock of hair played upon the round white shoulder.

I felt my knees tremble.  This tall, elegant, distinguished lady could never be Susanna!

With a feeling of jealousy I watched the pair intently until the next time they came by.  When just opposite to me the lady raised her eyes, her glance fell upon me, and a deep blush suddenly overspread her face and neck right down to the lace edging on her dress.