“Chaim! It’s a plot!” The boy darted after the physician and grasped his coattails. But Trumpelman had already arrived at one of the private booths that lined the far wall of the Astoria Café. Ignoring the warning, he parted the velvet curtain and stepped inside.

“Have you perhaps lost this, Miss Lubliver?” he said.

The singer was sitting by a little table, on an upholstered divan. Her cigarette was burning in a holder. Slowly, showing a trace of lipstick, she smiled. “Ah! My rose!”

Trumpelman was still twisting the stuff of the purple curtain. “Where should I pin it?” he asked.

The woman’s gown was cut in the Chinese fashion—that is, with a long slit that ran well up one leg. This leg Miss Lubliver now lifted, placing the heel of her foot, with its sequined sandal, beneath her. “Here,” she said, indicating the wisp of material between her waistband and her thigh.

But Trumpelman stood, half transfixed, staring at the whiteness, like fresh snow, like cream, on the underside of her leg. Above the strap of her garter there were two green-colored bruises. His hand, the one with the flower, shook. “Rievesaltes beats you!” he exclaimed.

She did not answer, though her head gave a short jerk, like a twitch, and her chest heaved, stretching her thin gown against the dark dots of her breasts.

“One day I shall kill him!”

“Cigarette?” She held out to him, across the tiny room, a rare pack of French Bleues.

“What? Cigarette? No, no, no, no.” He felt that if he let go of the curtain he might actually fall.

“A drink then? A toast?”

“Miss Lubliver! I must not stay. The Council is leaving.”

“But you have a moment, please. Sit by me on this sofa. Just here.” She moved to the side of the divan, folding her second leg, like the first, beneath her. The Director of the Hatters’ Asylum stumbled forward.

“Miss! The sound of your dress! It rustles!”

He dropped onto the cushion, sank right into it, and took the white cigarette. She put the hot end of her own to his cold one, put her hand over his, then drew in her breath. He saw the lines in her lips, like an accordion’s, the down in her hollow cheek; and he felt, through the cloth of his trousers, her kneecap. His cigarette flared.

“Are you frightened?” she asked him. “Your hand is shaking.”

“Of the Others? The Occupiers? Never! It’s not fear, Miss Lubliver. It’s anger! It’s indignation! I know that only moments ago that man, like a goat, nibbled at your ear!”

Again her head jerked aside in a flinching movement.

“Miss, pardon me: now it is you who tremble.”

She turned partly from him, stretching the tendons of her neck. He could just see her foot in her sandal. The toes were pinched together, as if squeezed by a hand. A tear hung on her lashes. With his thumb he smudged it on her cheek.