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“They knew how to keep discipline in their house,” she said.

She looked at him and there was pride and fear and anger about her red mouth and in her strange eyes.

“That they did,” he said. “God bless them for it in their graves!”

She sat down in the old chair and put her arms around the jar, where the man writhed through thorns. She stared at the man’s face and it was as though she were with him and felt the thorns in her flesh.

“Here also it was that we two bound ourselves to each other for good and all, Adelheid. That evening when we put our names to the old yellow paper there, in the wall. Then you pledged yourself to this room, which you hate. And, when the time comes, our son will come here with the woman who shall be his joy.”

He went out on the balcony and came back, white and wet with snow. He brought the cold in with him and she shivered. He stood silent by the fire and then began to walk about again. She listened to his step and waited for a word and could find nothing to say.