“No, Cordt,” she said. “If it is like that, then what I said was not true.”
He waved his hand and shook his head impatiently:
“Not to-day or to-morrow,” he said. “But in a year, or two years, or ten. And, if it does not happen, then it is only an accident.”
Then she moved nearer to him and laid her head on his knee. She looked up to see if he minded. But he was far away in his thoughts and did not notice it.
She suddenly felt peaceful and contented. She was glad that she had got it said. She felt as if it was removed to a distance ... perhaps it was quite gone ... she could not understand why he continued to speak of it.
And what he said about another man seemed so far to her and so impossible. She thought about it as though it concerned somebody else:
“I love you, Cordt,” she said. “And, if, one day, another man came and I loved him ... could I help it?”
He sprang up so suddenly that she had to seize the arm of the chair lest she should fall:
“No,” he said, scornfully. “You could not.”
He rushed through the room and repeated his words three or four times. Fru Adelheid rose from the floor and sat down in her chair and closed her eyes.