Annele, however, repeatedly urged Lenz to undertake an establishment of this kind along with her father, and if it was necessary, he might travel for a year in the interests of the firm, while she would stay with her parents. Lenz, however, declared,—
"I am not suited to that kind of thing, and I shall certainly not leave home as a married man, when I never did so as a bachelor."
He therefore entirely gave up all idea of an Association, and pacified Annele by assuring her that they would have quite as good an income; that she need have no fears on that account, and Pilgrim quite agreed with Lenz's views.
Annele consequently regarded Pilgrim as the chief obstacle to Lenz's advancement in life.
"He is a man," said she, "who never in all his life succeeded in anything, and he never will."
She tried, in every possible way, to sow discord between Pilgrim and Lenz, but she entirely failed.
Annele brooded over various plans, and was constantly reckoning and calculating in her head. She knew that Lenz had become security for Faller when he bought his house, and now she constantly pressed on him the propriety of recalling this security. He was obliged to consent to her wish, but just as he arrived at Faller's house his friend came out to meet him, laughing, and saying—
"My wife has just presented me, for the second time, with twins."
Lenz of course could not, at such a moment, plague Faller by depriving him of the security; and when Annele inquired what he had done, he gave her an evasive answer.
The night before the Techniker's marriage with the Doctor's daughter, Annele had a son. When Lenz was standing by her bedside, full of joy, she said:—