“I think your father was right,” she said. “I think it was odd of your mother ... not quite ... not quite natural.”
Cordt pushed the hair from his forehead, but said nothing.
“I could see quite well that you would have me do the same. But I couldn’t do it. I can’t do it as well as old Marie does and I can’t see that that is necessary in order to be a good mother.... Then you also told me that, one evening, when your mother had to go out, you cried without stopping until she came home again.”
“Yes.”
“But, if your mother had been like me and if old Marie had undressed you every night, then it would have been she whom you would have cried for.”
“So it would,” he replied. “But it was good for me and good for herself that it was mother.”
“I don’t understand that,” she said.
But then she raised her head and looked at him with great, proud eyes:
“Yes ... I understand,” she said. “I understand that it is good for a man and gives him confidence to see his wife chained to her baby’s cradle.”
“That is so, Adelheid.”