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“You ought to be, Cordt,” she said. “You ought to be. I am yours and I love you. You won me once: see to it that you know how to keep me. Fight for me, Cordt. I am young, I am pretty and the world is full of men.”

He rose deliberately and looked at her till she thought for a moment that he would strike her.

“You will be twenty-six next month,” he said. “And, besides, we in our family don’t fight to keep our wives.”

“Cordt.”

She sat down without knowing what she was doing. He looked at her and she looked back at him. She could not help thinking how tall he was; and how easily he wore his clothes; and that one of his shoulders was a little lower than the other.

Then he crossed the room, so quickly that he nearly tripped over the carpet. He struggled with the old spinning-wheel and pulled it over the floor. She followed him with her eyes.

“Can you spin on my great-grandmother’s wheel, Adelheid?” he asked.

She crossed her arms on her breast and looked at him.

“Can’t you, Adelheid? Couldn’t you learn? Not if I begged you to?”