She got up quickly to ring for supper, and tried to smile. But it was no real smile.
He saw it, and that put him still more out of humour. "Never mind, don't try. Don't force yourself to smile." He sat down at the table with a weary movement. But his hunger did not seem to be so great, after all, as he only helped himself in a spiritless manner when the steaming dishes were brought in and placed in front of him, and ate in the same manner without knowing what he was eating.
The dining-room was much too large for the two lonely people; the handsome room looked uncomfortably empty on that cool evening in autumn. The woman shivered with cold.
"We shall have to start heating the house," said the man.
That was all that was said during the meal. After it was over he got up to go across to his study. He wanted to smoke there, the room was smaller and cosier; he did not notice that his wife's eyes had never left him.
If Paul would only tell her what he thought of Wolfgang staying away! Where could Wolfgang be now? She became entirely absorbed in her wandering thoughts, and hardly noticed that she was alone in the cold empty room.
She had a book in front of her, a book the whole world found interesting--an acquaintance had said to her: "I could not stop reading it; I had so much to think about, but I forgot everything owing to the book"--but it did not make her forget anything. She felt as though she were in great trouble, and that that was making her dull. Even duller, more indifferent to outward things than at the time of her father's and mother's deaths. She had read so much in those years of mourning, and with special interest, as though the old poems had been given to her anew and the new ones were a cheering revelation. She could not read anything now, could not follow another's thoughts. She clung to her own thoughts. True, her eyes flew over the page, but when she got to the bottom she did not know what she had read. It was an intolerable condition. Oh, owh much she would have liked to have taken an interest in something. What would she not have given only to be able to laugh heartily for once; she had never experienced a similar longing for cheerfulness, gaiety and humour before. Oh, what a relief it would have been for her if she could have laughed and cried. Now she could not laugh, but--alas!--not cry either, and that was the worst: her eyes remained dry. But the tears of sorrow she had not wept burnt her heart and wore out her life with their unshed salty moisture.
No, death was not the most terrible that could happen. There were more terrible things than that. It was terrible when one had to say to oneself: "You have brought all your suffering on yourself. Why were you not satisfied? Why must you take by force what nature had refused?" It was more terrible when one felt how one's domestic happiness, one's married happiness, love, faith, unity, how all that intimately unites two people was beginning to totter--for did she not feel every day how her husband was getting colder and colder, and that she also treated him with more indifference? Oh, the son, that third person, it was he who parted them. How miserably all her theories about training, influence, about being born in the spirit had been overthrown. Wolfgang was not the child in which she and her husband were united in body and soul--he was and would remain of alien blood. And he had an alien soul. Poor son!
All at once a discerning compassion shot up in the heart of the woman, who for days, weeks, months, even years, had felt nothing but bitterness and mortification, ay, many a time even something like revolt against the one who thus disturbed her days. How could she be so very angry with him, who was not bound to his parents' house by a hundred ties? It was not his parents' house, that was just the point. Maybe he unconsciously felt that the soil there was not his native soil--and now he was seeking, wandering.
Käte pondered, her head resting heavily in her hand: what was she to do first? Should she confess to him where he came from? Tell him everything? Perhaps things would be better then. But oh, it was so difficult. But it must be done. She must not remain silent any longer. She felt her trembling heart grow stronger, as she made the firm resolve to speak to him when he returned home. What she had kept as the greatest secret, what she had guarded with trembling, what nothing could have torn from her, as she thought, she was now prepared to reveal of her own free will. She must do so. Otherwise how could things ever be better? How could they ever end happily, or ever end at all?