Читать книгу The Old Room онлайн

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He did not so much as look at her. She felt that she was being treated as a child whom one does not trouble to answer and she worked herself up into a steadily increasing passion and sought for words to wound him:

“Every love passes,” she said. “That we know. It is all very well for those who die first. They show up prettily in history; but there is nothing to prove that they were better than the rest of us.”

Cordt was still walking. Now he stood over by the window and looked out. Then he began to walk again.

“Cordt.”

He stopped before her chair and looked at her.

“Do you know how long King Olav and Queen Thyre were married?”

“What is the point of all this, Adelheid?”

She pushed back her chair and stood up. She was not able to say at once what she wished, but took a step towards him and sat down again and felt quite powerless.

Then there was something in his glance that helped her. And she drew herself up and looked him firmly in the face:

“It means that you are sitting here and growing musty in old books and old stuff and nonsense, while life is taking its course around you. In time, your beard will grow fast to the table and you will never speak a word, except once every ten years, and then it will be so wise and deep that no one will understand it.”