In effect Dunbar had sent two letters, one between the lines of the other. Vienna was chilly, he began, but the setting could not have been more beautiful with a hundred red trees along the Ringstrasse and the continual strains of the waltz. There was also, of course, the Danube and stimulating evenings in the common. The nights, however, were tiresome and one could not escape the Jews.

There were two brief paragraphs concerning Zelle's bohemian friends, then a long and ambivalent description of her first performance. "Like all Austrians," he wrote, "the Viennese can be exceedingly possessive, particularly when consumed with a popular entertainer . . ." He further noted that the local aristocracy was a bore. After all, it was not English.

From these idle reflections it seemed that Dunbar's message took a cryptic turn, with vague complaints about Zelle's schedule, her relationship with others, and an even vaguer recognition of his own obsession. Apparently he had been reading Freud, and there was something about cyclical disturbances that held him like a magnet.

In contrast to all this, however, his closing remarks were cheerful and reserved. An acquaintance of Margaretha's had invited them to the country, where he hoped to shoot stag but would settle for pheasant. Zelle was looking forward to riding, and naturally she sent her regards . . .

It was four in the afternoon when Gray put down the letter. Four o'clock, the dazed hour. Zelle probably would have been napping, while Dunbar brooded in an adjoining room. The light would have been blue or steel-blue, her clothing flung all over the place.

It was obvious from the closing remarks that Dunbar expected a reply, but even if one had known what to write, another five or six pages on Zelle seemed pointless. One could never hope to explain her, analyze or dismiss her. She was much too complex to define, and advice from another man was irrelevant.

"But I never quite know when she's joking and when she's serious," Dunbar had said. Then you probably never will, Gray could have told him. For ultimately she came from another world, an odd place that one entered through a low door in a wall. Everything was slightly out of focus, and the roads all led in circles. Time was also a little warped so that a single night could feel like a thousand years.

More than six weeks passed without further word from Dunbar, and from these days are a number of what seem to be simple drawings suggesting a return to basics. He worked with honest light and austere shapes. He spent a long time dissecting a wicker chair. He had also become intrigued with the neighborhood cats, and eventually adopted a stray called Bolero. The animal still survives in a watercolor from the fall of 1908.