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“Adelheid,” he said, “I suppose you wouldn’t care to stay at home to-night?”

She lay back in her chair and looked at her hands.

“Oh,” she said, “I wanted to go out to supper.”

“I should so much like to talk to you.”

“But I did come home from the theatre, dear,” she replied and put out her hand to him.

He did not see it and she let it fall.

“I would rather have stayed at home after the theatre, Adelheid.”

“Yes, I see,” she answered and just shrugged her shoulders. “I did not understand.”

“But you understood it in the theatre. And now you want to sup out all the same.”

He bent over to her to catch her eyes. She said nothing and did not look at him.

“Adelheid.”

Fru Adelheid knit her brow:

“I don’t go to the theatre, you see, for the sake of the play,” she said. “That does not amuse me. But it amuses me to watch that sea of people and to hear them clamor and then fall silent. I like the way they clap and the way they are quite still when anything good is being said on the stage. Then something sings inside me and I enjoy it.”