He sat down again and threw his head back in his chair, with his face turned away from her. She was so tired, could not find the words she wanted, said everything differently and in another tone than that in which she thought it.
And, as he quieted down beside her, she began to think more clearly than usual and it seemed to her that there was nothing to be done but to say her worst. Then she clenched her fists, to give herself strength, and closed her eyes while she spoke:
“You must know things as they are, Cordt. It is all true, as you have seen it and as you have said it. I have lied to you, Cordt. I lied in my words ... I lied every time I came up here and sat with you.”
Now she looked at him. He raised his head with an effort and met her eyes. Then he turned his face away again:
“You are lying now,” he said.
She opened her mouth and closed it again, so that her teeth struck together.
Then she crossed her hands in her lap and bent over them and wept:
“I don’t know that,” she said.
Cordt stood up and walked across the floor, slowly and wearily and without thinking. Fru Adelheid’s tears fell into her lap.
They were in this room, each independent of the other, each without sympathy for the other. Their hearts were dead, their thoughts paralyzed. They were no longer two people who loved each other and who strove to be happy, not even two who were angry or sorry because they were to be parted. They were just two people under sentence of death, whom chance had imprisoned in the same cell, but who had nothing else in common.