"Fie upon all the cowards! Oh! if I were only a man!"
Clodwig sat in the corner, shivering. At this moment something clinked in Bella's mouth, and she put her hand up to it. What is that? Yes, she took it out—it is so. In her angry gnashing of her teeth, she had broken a front tooth, which had been tender for a long time, and required careful treatment. Bella clinched the hand in which she held the tooth, and pressed her lips together. What has happened to her? The thought rapidly shot through her, How vexatious it was that she could no longer ridicule those who wear false teeth; but yet she can, for nobody will believe that she, Bella, has a false tooth.
They met the Banker waiting for them in the town: he said that he had sent the message to his house, and was ready.
Bella got out of the carriage, and holding a handkerchief before her mouth, and speaking in muffled tones, requested the Banker to accompany her husband, and a servant to stay with her. She hurried towards the railroad. Arrived at the station, she was perplexed; and without taking the handkerchief from her mouth, she told the servant to take tickets for the Fortress. Then she sat still in a corner of the passenger-room, with two thicknesses of veil over her face. She rode to the Fortress-City. No one was to know that she wore a false tooth, no one was to see her with a gap in her teeth.
Clodwig drove homewards, and often wiped his eyes. Above all, his pride was wounded; he, Clodwig, was scorned, and by whom? By his wife. And on whose account? On account of this hollow-hearted adventurer. She has never loved me one single instant: that was a stab to his very heart, and this stab never ceased to be felt; for what he suffered bodily was transmuted into a suffering of the soul. Who is there that can measure this action and re-action of body and soul?
The rain had ceased; but a mist seemed before Clodwig's eyes, and a heavy gloom. He reached Wolfsgarten; but all the apartments seemed full of smoke, full of haze. He seated himself in his chair.
"I am lonely, lonely," he said to himself continually.
The Banker spoke to him in gentle words; but Clodwig shook his head; he knew that Bella had never loved him, that she hated him. He felt himself humiliated, scourged. Bella's words had wounded him to the heart's core, wounded him to the death.
They drew off his coat: he looked for a long time at the coat, and nodded with a sad smile.
Did he forebode that he would never put it on again?