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He shook his head.

“Do you want to cut off all our acquaintance, Cordt?”

“No,” he said. “I do not. But I don’t care to go out just now.”

“What do you think our friends will say?”

“Let them say what they like.”

“Don’t you consider how unpleasant it is for me?”

“Oh, yes. But I don’t care to go out at present.”

He lit his cigar at the candle on the mantel-shelf. Then he sat down again and smoked quietly and looked into the fire. She looked at him and sighed.

And, without knowing how it happened and without intending it, she suddenly felt her heart touched and her eyes grew moist:

“Are you not happy, Cordt?”

He looked up and gazed at her:

“No.”

“And it is my fault? Because your wife is a silly woman, who wants to go out every day?”

“You are not that, Adelheid.”

“Because I am an empty, restless, modern creature?”

“You are not that.”

“What am I then, Cordt?”

He took her hand and kissed it and smiled to her:

“You are my wife, Adelheid. And we have a little baby, we two, and perhaps will have another.”