“You are driving me away from you, Cordt. I do so want to tell you this, while there is still time, if only I could find the right words. Won’t you sit down a little, Cordt? My head aches so.”
He sat down in the chair. Then she rose and put some wood on the fire and sat down again:
“I am so afraid of myself when we talk together, Cordt,” she said. “It is not only that I am wicked and say what I do not mean. I do that, too. But you are so good. And you show me thoughts in my mind which are not there before you utter them. But then they come and I think that you are right and that they have been there always. That is so terrible, Cordt.”
They sat silent. Fru Adelheid closed her eyes; Cordt moved restlessly in his chair:
“Adelheid,” he said.... “You told me that evening....”
“You must not say that ... you must not.”
“Do you remember, you said ... about the wild, red love ... that it was not the love which you have?”
She shook his hand and pressed it:
“That is just it,” she said. “I am grateful to you because you were so good. And because you did not take it ill. But that was not in me, Cordt. I did not know it. But then you said it ... and made me say ... what I said. But then, at that very moment, I understood that it was so. And that made me feel so terribly bad ... as I did. But then I felt a sort of secret joy ... a secret treasure. It seemed to me that I was richer than before. I was no longer afraid of what may come ... for women sometimes think of that, Cordt, while they are young, how empty everything will be, when that is past.”
He listened, with his face turned to the fire.