"What did you say, Ingeborg?" he said, looking at her with that so recognisable look.

For all her study of him she felt she did not yet know Robert.

"I only said," she stammered, "that I--that here--that here I _was_."

He looked at her for a further s.p.a.ce of silence. Then it flashed upon her that he was, dreadfully, pretending. He was acting. He was going to torment her before punishing her. He was going to be slowly cruel.

Herr Dremmel, as though he were gathering himself together--gathering himself, she thought watching him and growing cold at his uncanniness, for a horrible spring--inquired of her if she had walked.

"Yes," said Ingeborg even more faintly, her eyes full of watchful fear.

He continued to look at her, but his hand while he did so felt about on the table for the pen he had laid down.

She recognized this look, too--amazing, horrible, how he could act--it was the one he had when, talking to somebody, a new illumination of the subject he was writing about came into his mind.

She felt sure now that the worst was going to happen to her; but first there was to be torture, a long playing about. These revealed depths of cunning cruelty in him, of talent for cleverest acting, froze her blood.

Where was Robert, the man of large simplicities she believed she had known? It was a strange man, then, she had been living with? He had never, through all the years, been the one she thought she had married.

"Please-" she said, holding out both her hands, "Robert--don't. Won't you--won't you be natural?"

He still looked at her in silence. Then he said with a sudden air of remembering, "Did you get your boots, Ingeborg?"

This was dreadful. That he should even talk about the boots! Throw in her face that paltry preliminary lying.

"You _know_ I didn't," she said, tears of shame for him that he could be so cruel coming into her eyes.

Again Herr Dremmel looked at her as though collecting, as though endeavouring to remember and to find.

"I know?" he repeated, after a pause of reflective gazing during which Ingeborg had flushed vividly and gone white again, so much shocked was she at the glimpse she was getting into inhumanity. It was devilish, she thought. But Robert devilish? Her universe seemed tumbling about her ears.

"I think," she said, lifting her head with the pride he ought to have felt and so evidently, so lamentably, didn't, "one should give one's punishment like a man."

There was another pause, during which Herr Dremmel, with his eyes on hers, appeared to ruminate.

Then he said, "Did you have a pleasant time?"

This was fiendish. Even when acting, thought Ingeborg, there were depths of baseness the decent refused to portray.

"I think," she said in a trembling voice, "if you wouldn't mind leaving off pretending--oh," she broke off, pressing her hands together, "what's the good, Robert? What's the _good_? Don't let us waste time. Don't make it worse, more hideous--you got my letter--you know all about it--"

"Your letter?" said Herr Dremmel.

She begged him, she entreated him to leave off pretending. "Don't, don't keep on like this," she besought--"it's such a dreadful way of doing it--it's so unworthy--"

"Ingeborg," said Herr Dremmel, "will you not cultivate calm? _You_ have journeyed and you have walked, but you have done neither sufficiently to justify intemperateness. Perhaps, if you must be intemperate, you will have the goodness to go and be so in your own room. Then we shall neither of us disturb the other."

"No," said Ingeborg, wringing her hands, "no. I won't go. I won't go into any other room till you've finished with me."

"But," said Herr Dremmel, "I have finished with you. And I wish," he added, pulling out his watch, "to have tea. I am driving to my fields at five o'clock."

"Oh, Robert," she begged, inexpressibly shocked, he meant to go on tormenting her then indefinitely? "please, please do whatever you're going to do to me and get it over. Here I am only _waiting_ to be punished--"

"Punished?" repeated Herr Dremmel.

"Why," cried Ingeborg, her eyes bright with grief and shame for this steady persistence in baseness, "why, I don't think you're to punish me!

You're not _fit_ to punish a decent woman. You're contemptible!"

Herr Dremmel stared. "This," he then said, "is abuse. At least," he added, "it bears a close resemblance to that which in a reasonable human being would be abuse. However, Ingeborg, speech in you does not, as I have often observed, accurately represent meaning. I should rather say,"

he amended, "a meaning."

She moved across to the table to him, her eyes shining. He held his pen ready to go on writing so soon as she should be good enough to leave off interrupting.

"Robert," she said, leaning with both hands on the table, her voice shaking, "I--I never thought I'd have to be _ashamed_ of you. I could bear anything but having to be _ashamed_ of you--"

"Perhaps, then, Ingeborg," said Herr Dremmel, "you will have the goodness to go and be ashamed of me in your own room. Then we shall neither of us disturb the other."

"You are being so horrible that you're twisting things all wrong, and putting me in the position of having to forgive _you_ when it's _you_ who've got to forgive _me_--"

"Pray, then, Ingeborg, go and forgive me in your own room. Then we shall neither of us--"

"You're being cruel--oh, but it's unbelievable--you, my husband--you're playing with me like a cat with a miserable mouse, a miserable, sorry mouse, something helpless that can't do anything back and wouldn't if it could--and see how you make me talk, when it's you who ought to be talking! Do, do, Robert, begin to talk--begin to say things, do things, get it over. You've had my letter, you know perfectly what I did--"

"I have had no letter, Ingeborg."

"How dreadful of you to say that!" she cried, her face full of horror at him. "When you know you have and you know I know you have--that letter I left for you--on this table--"

"I have seen no letter on this table."

"But I _put_ it here--I put it _here_--"

She lifted her hand to point out pa.s.sionately the very spot to him; and underneath her hand was the letter.

Her heart gave one great b.u.mp and seemed to stop beating. The letter was where she had put it and was unopened.

She looked up at Herr Dremmel. She turned red; she turned white; she tasted the very extremity of shame. "I--beg your pardon," she whispered.

Herr Dremmel wore a slight air of apology. "One omits, occasionally, to notice," he said.

"Yes," breathed Ingeborg.

She stood quite still, her eyes on his face.

He pulled out his watch. "Perhaps now, Ingeborg," he said, "you will be so good as to see about tea. I am driving to my fields--"

"Yes," breathed Ingeborg.

He bent over his work and began writing again.