Then he let go her hand and drew himself up in his seat:
“Sometimes I think it would be easier if there were an action that had to be forgiven,” he said. “Something to be forgotten. Then it would not be over.”
“It is not over,” she said. “We have missed happiness, because I did not keep the measure by which I should be gauged. But our boy down below lives and he can win a wife who shall sit in the old room with honor.”
“No,” said Cordt. “The secret of the old room is out. It does not suit these times and still less the times to come. Our son shall not see his happiness shattered here.”
And, a little later, he pressed his hand hard to his temples and said so softly that she just heard it:
“For it is hard to decrease one’s own happiness.”
The candles went out ... one after the other.
“It is late, Adelheid,” he said. “We had better go.”
“Yes,” she said.