"And in Konigsberg? That also is nearer than Berlin."

"You must have heard," she said, laying hold, because she was afraid, of the first words that came into her head, "of Berlin wool. Well, the same thing exactly applies to boots."

He stared at her as one who feels about for some point of contact with an alien intelligence.

"Naturally if you have to go you must," he said.

"Yes. For ten days."

"Ten, Ingeborg? On account of boots?"

She nodded defiantly, her hands beneath the table twisted into knots.

He adjusted his mind to the conception.

"Ten days for boots?"

"Ten, ten," she said recklessly, prepared to brave any amount of opposition. "I want to see a few things while I'm about it--the galleries, for instance. It isn't going to be _all_ boots. I haven't stirred from here since our marriage, except to go to Zoppot--it's time I went--it's really _ridiculously_ time I went--"

"But," said Herr Dremmel, with the complete reasonableness of one who is indifferent and has no desire whatever to argue, "but naturally. Of course, Ingeborg."

"Then--you don't mind?"

"But why should I mind?"

"You--you're not even surprised?"

"But why should I be surprised?" And once again he reflected on her apparently permanent obtuseness to values.

She gazed at him with the astonishment of a child who has screwed itself up for a beating and finds itself instead being blessed. She felt relief, but a pained relief; an aggrieved, almost angry relief; such as he feels who putting his entire strength into the effort to lift a vessel he fears is too heavy for him finds it light and empty. Her soul, as it were, tumbled over backwards and sprawled.

"How funny!" she murmured. "How very funny! And here I've been afraid to tell you."

But once more he had ceased to listen. His eye had been caught by a statement on the page in front of him that interested him acutely, and he read with avidity to the end of the chapter. Then he got up with the book in his hand and went to the door, thinking over what he had read.

She sat looking after him.

"I expect--I think--I suppose I shall start to-morrow," she said as he opened the door.

"Start?" he repeated absently. "Why should you start?"

"Oh, Robert--I can't get there if I don't start."

"Get where, Ingeborg?" he asked, his eyes on hers but his thoughts in unimaginable distances.

"Oh, Robert--but to Berlin, of course."

"Berlin. Yes. Very well. Berlin."

And, deeply turning over the new and pregnant possibilities suggested to him by what he had just been reading, he went out.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

As though to a.s.sure her of what she already knew, that she was on the threshold of the most glorious ten days of her life, the world when she looked out of the window next morning was radiant with sunshine and sparkling with freshness. Far away on the edge of Russia the great rain clouds that had come up to Kokensee from the west and folded it for two days in a stupor of mist were disappearing in one long purple line. The garden glistened and laughed. Sweet fragrances from the responsive earth hurried to meet the sun like eager kisses. If she had needed rea.s.suring, this happy morning warm and scented would have done it; but now that the night was over, a time when those who are going to have doubts do have them, and the dark sodden days when if facts are going to be blurred they are blurred, she felt no scruples nor any misgivings--she had simply got to the beginning of the most wonderful holiday of her life.

Everything was easy. Robert went away after an early breakfast to his fields to see the improvement forty-eight hours' soaking must have made, and obviously did not mind her impending departure in the least; one of the horses, till lately lame, was recovered, Karl told her, and able to take her in to Meuk; the servant Klara seemed proud to be left in sole charge; the train left Meuk so conveniently that she would have time to visit Robertlet and Ditti on the way. Singing she packed her smallest trunk; singing she thrust money from the cupboard where it had so long lain useless into her blouse--one, two, three, ten blue German notes of a hundred marks each--while she wondered, but not much, if it would be enough, and wondered, but equally not much, if it would be too little; singing she pinned on unfamiliar objects such as a hat and veil, and sought out gloves; singing she handed over the keys to Klara; singing she stood on the steps watching Karl harness the horses. All the birds of Kokensee were singing, too, and the pig sunning itself in a thick ecstasy of appreciation also sang according to its lights, and it was not its fault, she thought excusingly, if what happened when it sang was that it grunted.

"Life is really the heavenliest thing," she said to herself, b.u.t.toning her gloves, her face sober with excess of joy. "The _things_ it has round its corners! The dear surprises of happiness." And when the b.u.t.tons came off she didn't mind, but excused them, too, on the ground that they were not used to being b.u.t.toned, and let her gloves happily dangle. She would have excused everything that day. She would have forgiven everybody every sin.

Klara brought her out a packet of sandwiches with her luggage, and a little bunch of rain-washed flowers.

"How kind every one is!" she thought, smiling at Klara, wondering if she would mind very much if she kissed her, her heart one single all-embracing Thank you that reached right round the world. And then suddenly, just as Karl was ready and the carriage was actually at the door and the little trunk being put into it, and her umbrella and sandwiches and flowers, she ran back into the house and scribbled a note to Robert and put it on the table in his laboratory where he would not be able to avoid seeing it when he came in that afternoon.

"I _can't_ not tell him," was the thought that had winged her impulse, "I _can't_ not tell the truth this heavenly, G.o.d-given day of joy."

"_It wasn't true about the boots_," she wrote, inking her gloves, too frantically hurried to take them off. "_I'm going to Italy with Mr.

Ingram--to Venice--it's his picture--and of course other things, too on the way--if you think it over you won't really mind--I must run or I'll miss the train--_

"INGEBORG."

And she climbed up into the carriage and drove off greatly relieved and strong in her faith, if you gave him time and quiet, in Robert's understanding of a thing so transparently reasonable. She would write again, she said to herself, a real letter from Berlin and put her points of view and Ingram's before him. Of course that was the right thing to do. Of course a highly intelligent man like Robert was bound ultimately to understand.

But her train did not get to Berlin till eleven o'clock that night, and when she reached the _Christliche Hospiz_ she found a letter from Ingram telling her she must be at the Anhalter station next morning at nine, and though she meant to get up early and write she spent the time, being very tired, asleep instead, and it was only when the strains of a harmonium penetrated into her room and wandered round her head making slow Lutheran noises that she woke up and realised how nearly she was on the verge of missing the train to Italy.

Breakfastless and prayerless and almost without paying her bill she hurried forth from the _Christliche Hospiz_, her clothes full of an odd smell of naphthalin and the meals that had been eaten there before she arrived, the ancient meals of all the yesterdays. From the smell she concluded, cautiously and reluctantly sniffing while she put down both windows of her cab, that what they had to eat in the _Christliche Hospiz_ was the chorales of the harmonium expressed in cabbage; and whether it was the cab or whether it was her clothes she did not know, but there inside it with her still was cabbage.

"It's the odour of piety," she explained hastily to Ingram when he on meeting her at the station looked at her with what she thought a severe inquiry.

"It's that you're within an ace of missing the train," he said, catching hold of her elbow and hurrying her down the platform to a door that still stood open, with an angry official, glaring dreadfully in spite of his tip, waiting beside it to shut it.

"I'm so sorry," she said, panting a little as she dropped into a corner of the carriage opposite him and the train slipped away from the station, "but I couldn't get here any sooner."

"Why couldn't you?" he asked, still severely, for he had spent a distressing and turbulent half hour. "You only had to get up in time."

"But I couldn't get up because I was asleep."

"Nonsense, Ingeborg. You could tell them to call you."

"Well, but I didn't tell them."

"And why don't you b.u.t.ton your gloves? Here--I'll b.u.t.ton them."