"Well, I beg your pardon for referring to all this. I had no intention of doing so, but when I saw you walking past—well, thank you very much for having listened to me."
"Please don't mention it," said Bertha, mechanically stretching out her hand to him. He did not notice it, however, and she let it lie upon the table.
"Now it is all over," said Herr Rupius; "now comes the time of loneliness, the time of dread."
"But has your wife … she loves you, I'm sure of it!… I am quite certain that you are giving yourself needless anxiety. Wouldn't the simplest course be, Herr Rupius, for you to request your wife to forego this journey?"
"Request?…" said Herr Rupius, almost majestically. "Can I pretend to have the right to do so? AH these last six or seven years have only been a favour which she has granted me. I beg you, consider it. During all these seven years not a word of complaint at the waste of her youth has passed her lips."
"She loves you," said Bertha, decisively; "and that is the chief point."
Herr Rupius looked at her for a long time.
"I know what is in your mind, although you do not venture to say it. But your husband, my dear Frau Bertha, lies deep in the grave, and does not sleep by your side night after night."
He looked up with a glance that seemed to ascend to Heaven as a curse.
Time was getting on; Bertha thought of her train.