He crossed the room and then came back and stood and looked at her with a sense of dislike that increased every minute. She crept to the chair from which he had risen and laid her head on it. She closed her eyes before his glance and wept silently and without stopping.
“You...?” he said slowly.
She received the blow which the word gave her without breathing a sound. Once she opened her eyes and immediately closed them again. Pale and still she lay before his feet.
Then his eyes blazed with anger and scorn:
“What a number of years have passed since we two first met, Fru Adelheid ... what a number of miserable years!”
“Yes,” she said and raised her head for a moment and laid it on the chair again.
“You went away ... in search of your red happiness. You were not content with your husband, whom you loved and who loved you ... you must have all men on their knees before your beauty ... you must needs see the desire in their eyes and their unchaste hands cramped because they dared not lay them upon Cordt’s wife.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, did you find the lover who bound your will to his foot? And did he spurn you when he had seen to the depths of your charming eyes? Or did you leave him of your own accord ... and go farther out into the world ... in search of that which was greater still and redder?”
“I had no lover,” she said, in a low voice.