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“Are you always amused among amusing people?”

She looked at him a little doubtfully:

“There is no such thing as always anywhere.”

“No,” he said, “more’s the pity. There is not.”

They sat silent, both steeped in thought. Then he pushed his hair from his forehead and said, calmly:

“Try if you can understand me, Adelheid. When a woman marries and becomes a mother, she usually becomes quiet ... quieter, I mean. I mean that there are victories which she cannot win, triumphs which she cannot achieve ... which she does not trouble about. She does not trouble about them, Adelheid, because she has deepened her life ... because she has come so near to one man that the approach of other men is distasteful to her. Then she becomes quiet ... quieter. And this quietness is not empty, but just richer than all the rest.”

She looked at him with a strangely inquisitive flash in her angry eyes:

“Are you jealous?” she asked.

He shook his head and made a gesture of denial with his hand. But she sprang from her chair and stood before him with great, proud eyes: