Fru Adelheid moved and Cordt turned his face to her and looked at her attentively. Her eyes were soft and dreamy; she smiled faintly, like a drowsy child.
“And if that be so,” he said, in a subdued voice, “if it be the case that I am not able to control my heart....” He let his head fall heavily on the arm of the chair. “If it be the case that love makes me happy and confident, so that I build my life and the life of my family upon it ... if it can then expire, without my knowing how or why, and I have to look for the mother of my children in a strange man’s bed, then why do I let my wife go out in the street unveiled? Why do I not lock her up, as the Turk does? Or why do we not kill the mother when the child is born?”
He rose and walked round the room and grew calmer as he walked:
“But it is not so,” he said. “Let the great keep their greatness ... let the poets celebrate them and the puny moderns ape them in their wretched way. And may there always be women who cannot give themselves more than once and men who love them.”
He stood by the fire and looked through the room. It was still on every side; the church-clock struck two.
“See, Adelheid,” he said, “how life passes more and more into law’s domain. Every day, the liberty of the one is taken for an encroachment upon the rights of the other. Every day, land, hitherto free of law, is regulated by law. Flowers beget no flowers without the gardener’s consent; animals no longer select their own mates. But no one can control his heart; and human beings pair like dogs in the street.”
The fire had burnt out when Cordt woke from his musings.
He saw that Fru Adelheid was asleep. He stood before her a long time, sick with compassion for her and for himself.
Then he stroked her gently on the hair:
“It is late ... Adelheid.”