I

There was dancing in the salon, but in the darkened smoking-room sat several men who did not dance. The younger ones had white flowers in their buttonholes, the older ones had decorations. In the corner of a sofa sat a man a little apart from the others; he sat very silent and smiled as at a happy dream. His face was brown, but his forehead was white. His frock coat was as correct as anyone else’s, and he had also a white flower in his buttonhole; but his left hand, which hung over the arm of the sofa, was tattooed with a blue anchor.

As a matter of fact it was not a ball; there had merely been a dinner, and afterwards there was dancing.

A man with a decoration was standing in front of him.

“You don’t dance, Mr. Fant?” he inquired.

Fant replied, “I’ve just been dancing with Miss Gabel.”

But as he said this, he felt that he blushed. Why should he have added “with Miss Gabel.” It was surely a matter of indifference with whom he had danced. Because he believed he had said something stupid, he was annoyed with the man to whom he had said it, and set to staring at his decoration without saying anything. Since this was a bogus foreign decoration of the worst sort, the man grew embarrassed, coughed drily, and passed on.

Fant remained seated and stared into a mirror which faced him on an oblique wall. But it was not himself that he saw in the mirror, it was the flooding light of the dancing hall and the sinuous lines of the women. They seemed to move silently in time with the music. Look at their red lips, look at the white curves of their arms!⁠—

There she was again! For the third time she glided past across the mirror. It was her cousin she was dancing with, a boy, lately a student⁠—ah, well!

No, he could not sit still, he could not look on any more. It surely signified nothing that the boy danced with his own cousin, but he could not look on. He rose and went out of the room.

Someone asked, “Who is this Mr. Fant?”

“He has invented something⁠—a gas-burner, I believe. He is already on the way to make a fortune.”

“But did you see,” said the man with the foreign order, “did you see that he has a blue anchor tattooed on one hand?”

They suddenly burst into guffaws.

II

He sauntered back and forth through the rooms. He went out into the corridor. A couple of Knights of Vasa were sitting on the wood-box talking about business while they gesticulated with two big cigars, on which they had left the labels. They grew silent as he passed.

He came into a greenish room that was half dark. From the roof on a narrow cord hung a single electric light, its glow shaded by blue and green fringes. On a dressing-table with a marble top an old Chinese mandarin of porcelain sat sleeping on his crossed legs.

How strangely far off the music sounded, as if from underneath!

He set the mandarin’s head in motion with a little punch of his little finger. Two mirrors repeated in unending succession the pale and lethargic nods of the yellow head.

Now it was quiet, the music.

All at once she stood there, in the middle of the room. He had not heard her enter. She held out both hands to him. He took them and drew her to him for a kiss, but she freed herself almost immediately.

“Somebody’s coming,” she said.

They listened. Voices approached and moved away again.

When all was quiet around them, he pressed her to him in a long kiss. And he thought while she kissed him: This is life! This is eternity!

Far away in the green darkness nodded the pale head of the mandarin.

“No one kisses like you,” he muttered.

“Many kiss like you,” she responded, smiling.

He thought to himself: she’s smiling so that I shall know she’s jesting and that she has never kissed anyone else.

While he caressed her two small hands between his, he noticed that she was looking at his left hand.

“You are looking at the anchor,” he said. “It’s true that it is not handsome. And it won’t come off.”

She took his hand and surveyed inquisitively the blue dots that formed an anchor. But she said nothing.

“It was in Hamburg that was done,” he said. “I was a ship’s boy on a vessel. We had come ashore and gone into a tavern by the harbor. I remember it all so well: the fog, the many masts in the harbor, and the smell of the grease. My comrades were tattooed, on the hands, arms and body, and they thought I ought to have myself tattooed also. I couldn’t refuse, or they would have thought I was afraid of the pain, for it hurt a great deal. But I thought, too, it was stylish; I was hardly fourteen, you know.”

“Are you tattooed on the body as well?” she asked.

Smilingly and somewhat unwillingly he answered, “Yes, I have on the breast a ship and a bird, which is supposed to be an eagle, though it’s more like a rooster.”

She looked long into his eyes, then slowly raised his hand to her lips and kissed the blue anchor.

III

Years passed, and one day Richard Fant said to his wife as they were dressing to go out to dinner, “Do you know, I think the blue anchor is beginning to fade. Perhaps it’s on the way to vanish entirely.”

“Oh, it’s not as bad as that,” she answered.

In reality her thoughts were in another direction. She was thinking of her cousin, Tom Gabel, who was an attaché at the embassy in Madrid. He had now been home for two months on a visit and had promised to come and fetch them so as to go together to the dinner.

“Hurry up,” she said, “so that Tom won’t have to wait for you.”

“I’m all ready,” he replied.

He had sat down in a corner in the shadow, fully dressed. She turned and scanned his attire.

“You’ve forgotten your decoration,” she remarked.

“I don’t want my decoration,” he responded.

“But Richard! could you be so discourteous to Tom, who got it for you?”

He went after his decoration. It was not one of the very worst, not an order of Christus or a Nichan Iftikar; it was a medium good decoration, a quite nice decoration. He fastened it on the lapel of his coat with the feeling that perhaps he really needed it, seeing that he had a blue anchor on his left hand.

IV

There was a dance after the dinner, but Fant remained sitting in a sofa corner of the smoking-room. By his side sat the man whom he had formerly annoyed by staring at his foreign decoration, but he was now a Knight Commander. They had become good friends and called each other by their first names when they said anything to each other, but they said nothing. They merely sat each in his corner of the sofa and smoked big cigars with labels and understood each other perfectly.

The doctors had forbidden Fant to smoke strong cigars, because he had a bad heart. But he had just lighted the third since dinner.

In the mirror on the middle of the opposite wall he saw the revolving of the dancers and the flood of light from the hall. He had often wondered how it was that they seemed to dance as though on felt or soft greensward, soundlessly. He understood now that it came from his seeing them in the mirror. Because the picture struck him from another quarter than the clatter and the music, he did not connect them, and over the flooring reflected in the mirror the dance appeared to go without noise. Look at the girls’ white dresses! behold their panting bosoms!⁠—

He recollected that he had once seen her who was now his wife float past, as they did, in a girl’s plain white ball-dress. She was differently clad now.

See! there she was, sure enough, with him, her cousin. She remained standing a moment in the doorway, erect, slender, and delicate as always. She seemed as if quite naked under the stiff, variegated silk in which she had wrapped her body, and which was only held together by clasps at the shoulders and waist. They bent their heads together and whispered.

No, he must move about a bit, stretch his legs a little.⁠—It is not good to sit still too long after a big dinner and smoke three black cigars.

He lighted the fourth and began to saunter back and forward through the room.

He went out into the corridor. Three young men with white flowers in their buttonholes sat on the wood-box with cigarettes in holders and talked about women, but they became silent as he went past. He opened the door to the little green cabinet and went in. It was empty. He set the mandarin’s yellow head in motion with a push of his knuckle and passed on to the window.

The windowpane breathed frost and wintry chill. He blew on it till there was a peephole between the ice-flowers, put his eye to the glass, and looked out. The sky was dark and glittering with stars. Highest up stood the Dipper with its handle aloft.

It was late, then.

He could not force himself to leave the room, because he felt a bitter and devouring desire for his wife and the kiss of old times, the kiss under the blue-green light from pearl fringe of the single electric light, the kiss which the mandarin had beheld in his nodding half-slumber. If she would only come now, precisely now! No one could kiss as she did, no one. He had kissed other women since she no longer loved him; but he had forgotten them all, he would not recognize them if he met them on the street. If she would only come! Yes, even if she but came to meet the other, even then he would take her forced and treacherous kiss as a boon, even then⁠—

He listened. Whispering voices were audible outside the door, but they grew silent all at once and remained so.

He had a strange sensation at his heart, he felt that in a couple of seconds he would lie stretched on the carpet, unconscious, but he held himself upright, and suddenly he heard from the entry where the young men were smoking their cigarettes a very clear voice which said: “Well, after all it’s only natural. One can’t expect her to be in love with someone who has a blue anchor tattooed on his hand.”

V

The coffin stood in the middle of the room. The black-clad woman walked back and forth, back and forth.

“No, he’s not coming⁠—”

When he finally did come, he said, “Pardon me, beloved. I was delayed by someone who came to call⁠—”

She nodded stiffly. She did not believe him, because he had not kissed her.

When he felt that they had stood too long silent, he said, “I must be off tomorrow. I’ve had a telegram from the minister.⁠—But I swear to you that I’ll come back,” he added in a somewhat lowered voice as if he did not wish that the dead man should hear.

She comprehended that he was lying and that he never meant to see her again. And she nodded.

“Goodbye,” she said.

When he had gone, she went forward to the head of the coffin and looked at the dead man without thinking any further, for she was too weary. But as she stood there she remembered suddenly that she had loved him. She had loved other men too, but it came to her now that she had loved this one most. At that thought she felt the tears rise from deep down in her heart; she took his left hand, the one with the blue anchor, and wetted it with her kisses and her tears.