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"First couple en avant!" said M. Knaak, and no words can describe how wonderfully the man brought out the nasal sound. They were practising the quadrille, and to Tonio Kröger’s intense terror he found himself in the same set with Inga Holm. He avoided her when he could, and still he kept getting near her; he forbade his eyes to approach her, and still his glance was forever striking her … Now she came gliding and running up hand in hand with red-headed Ferdinand Matthiessen, threw back her braid, and placed herself opposite him, breathing deeply; Mr. Heinzelmann the pianist ran his bony fingers over the keys, M. Knaak called out the figures, and the quadrille began.

She moved back and forth before him, forward and back, gliding and turning: a fragrance that came from her hair or the dainty white stuff of her dress reached him now and then, and his eyes grew sadder and sadder. "I love you, dear, sweet Inga," he was saying to himself; and he put into these words all the pain he felt that she was so merry and so intent on the dancing, and paid no heed to him. A wonderful poem by Storm came to his mind: "I fain would sleep, but thou must dance. " He was tormented by the humiliating contradiction that lay in having to dance while he was in love …

"First couple en avant!" said M. Knaak, for a new figure was beginning. " Compliment! Moulinet des dames! Tour de main!" And no one can describe in what a graceful manner he swallowed the silent e in de.

"Second couple en avant!" Tonio Kröger and his lady were the ones. "Compliment!" And Tonio Kröger bowed. "Moulinet des dames!" And Tonio Kröger, with lowered head and gloomy brow, laid his hand on the hands of the four ladies, on that of Inga Holm, and danced "moulinet. "

All around there arose a giggling and laughing. M. Knaak assumed a ballet pose which expressed a conventionalized horror. "O dear," he cried. "Halt, halt! Kröger has got in among the ladies. En arrière, Miss Kröger, back, fi donc! All understand it now except you. Quick, away, back with you!" And he drew out his yellow silk handkerchief and waved Tonio Kröger back to his place with it.

Everybody laughed—the boys, the girls, and the ladies beyond the portières; for M. Knaak had made the little episode too funny for words, and all were amused as at a play. Only Mr. Heinzelmann waited with unmoved official countenance for the signal to play on, for he was hardened against M. Knaak’s effects.

Then the quadrille was continued. And then there was an intermission. The second-girl came clinking through the door with a tea-tray of wine-jelly in glasses, and the cook followed in her wake with a cargo of raisin-cake. But Tonio Kröger stole away in secret out into the corridor, and there placed himself with his hands behind him at the window with drawn blinds, not reflecting that one could see nothing at all through the blinds, and that it was therefore ridiculous to stand in front of them and to act as if one were looking out.

But he looked into himself, where there was so much grief and longing. Why, why was he here? Why was he not sitting in his room by the window, reading in Storm’s Immensee and looking now and then into the twilight of the garden, where the old walnut-tree was groaning heavily? That would have been the place for him. Let the others dance and be lively and adept at it … But no, this was the right place after all, where he knew himself near to Inga, even though he only stood lonely and far off, trying to distinguish her voice, with its ring of warm life, in the hum, clinking, and laughter there within. Oh, your laughing blue almond eyes, you fair-haired Inga! As fair and merry as you, one can be only when one does not read Immensee and never attempts to compose its like; that is the sad part! …