"You came exceptionally early to-day," she said in excuse. She did not dare to look up frankly, she felt so exceedingly humiliated. She could not eat, an intolerable memory rendered every drink, every mouthful loathsome.
"Where is Wolfgang?"
There was the question for which she really ought to have been prepared and which crushed her nevertheless. She had no means of warding it off. What was she to answer? Should she say he was ill? Then his father would go up and see him. Should she say he was drunk and sleeping? Oh no, no, and still it could not remain a secret. She turned red and white, her lips quivered and not a word crossed them.
"Ha ha!" All at once her husband gave a loud laugh--a laugh partly good-natured and partly mocking--and then he stretched his hand to her across the table and eyed her calmly: "You must not agitate yourself like that if the boy feels a little seedy for once in a way. Such things do happen, every mother has to go through that."
"But not to that degree--not to that awful degree!" She screamed out aloud, overwhelmed with pain and anger. And then she seized her husband's hand and squeezed it between both hers that were cold and damp, and whispered, half stifled: "He was drunk--quite drunk--dead drunk!"
"Really?" The man frowned, but the smile did not quite disappear from his lips. "Well, I'll have a word with the boy when he has finished sleeping. Dead drunk, you say?"
She nodded.
"It won't have been quite as bad as that, I suppose. Still, to be drunk--that must not happen again. To take a little too much"--he shrugged his shoulders and a smile passed over his face as at some pleasant memory--"by Jove, who has been young and not taken a little too much for once in a way? Oh, I can still remember the first time I had done so. The headache after it was appalling, but the drop too much itself was fine, splendid! I would not like to have missed that."
"You--you've been drunk too?" She stared at him, with eyes distended.
"Drunk--you mustn't call that drunk exactly. A little too much," he corrected. "You mustn't exaggerate like that, Käte." And then he went on with his dinner as if nothing had happened, as if the conversation had not succeeded in depriving him of his appetite.