The room was very hot, for the stove had been alight all day and
the windows were seldom opened. Emil blundered about, but succeeded
somehow in serving everyone quickly and with order. The three old ladies
sat in silence, visibly disapproving: the Frau Professor had scarcely
recovered from her tears; her husband was silent and oppressed.
Conversation languished. It seemed to Philip that there was something
dreadful in that gathering which he had sat with so often; they looked
different under the light of the two hanging lamps from what they had ever
looked before; he was vaguely uneasy. Once he caught Cacilie's eye, and he
thought she looked at him with hatred and contempt. The room was stifling.
It was as though the beastly passion of that pair troubled them all; there
was a feeling of Oriental depravity; a faint savour of joss-sticks, a
mystery of hidden vices, seemed to make their breath heavy. Philip could
feel the beating of the arteries in his forehead. He could not understand
what strange emotion distracted him; he seemed to feel something
infinitely attractive, and yet he was repelled and horrified.
For several days things went on. The air was sickly with the unnatural
passion which all felt about them, and the nerves of the little household
seemed to grow exasperated. Only Herr Sung remained unaffected; he was no
less smiling, affable, and polite than he had been before: one could not
tell whether his manner was a triumph of civilisation or an expression of
contempt on the part of the Oriental for the vanquished West.
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