Thus there were mostly men at Laura’s little parties. She realized this with a shrug of her shoulders, a contented shrug. As a matter of fact she always felt at home with men. But little Georg was not an additional attraction for them. He was still exhibited now and then as an almost newborn babe. But in the end the sweet little baby grew too long in legs. And then Laura began to keep him out of sight. She came to think of him more and more as a tiresome encumbrance. She even grew ashamed of this reminder of her age and of her past. Georg was under the care of untidy, uncontrolled and incessantly changing nurses. When Laura was travelling she boarded him out with strangers wherever she might happen to be. And when she entertained he was put to bed to be out of the way.
Laura had resumed her work in front of the mirror. As the delicate task advanced towards the finishing touch with the powder puff and the choice of perfumes and jewels, her serious expression grew in solemnity.
Her movements became more deliberate like those of an officiating priest. All these pastes, creams, essences and perfumes were sacrifices and incense in a secret cult. The dressing table was the altar and the image in the mirror was the god. And just as a worshipper at the altar ponders over the past and questions the future, so it was at her dressing table that Laura became absorbed in recollections and sought inspiration for her future plans. Her face thus participated very intimately in all she did. When she thought of herself it was quite naturally of her hair, her mouth, her eyes, that she thought. Her egoism flourished under the spell of the mirrored image. The shadow and the reality merged imperceptibly together. She was sitting at the high altar of feminine selfishness.
Then Stellan arrived, dressed in a dinner jacket. He stepped without ceremony into the holiest of holies, patted Laura approvingly on the neck, and threw himself down in an empty chair beside the dressing table. You could scarcely have seen that he was over thirty and that his life during the last years had been rather stormy. His face still bore an expression of self-satisfied, smiling irony. Only the corners of his mouth had set, not into earnestness, but into hardness.