He went home at once, he had no wish to loaf about out of doors any longer. And as he sauntered along with unsteady gait down out-of-the-way roads, something rose up before him in the dusk of the autumn evening and placed itself in his path--it was a question:
"And you? Where are you going?"
He entered his parents' house in a mood that was strangely soft and conciliatory. But when he stepped into the room, his parents were sitting there as though to pass sentence on him.
Käte had not been able to keep it to herself after all, it had weighed on her mind, she had to tell somebody what she had seen. And it had irritated her husband more than his wife had expected. So the boy had got into such company!
"Where have you been wandering about?" he said to his son angrily.
The boy stopped short: why that voice? It was not so late. He raised his head with the feeling that they were treating him unjustly.
"Don't look at me so impudently." His father lost control of himself. "Where is that woman you were wandering about with?"
Wandering about--woman? The hot blood surged to the boy's head. Frida Lämke a woman--how mad. "She isn't a woman," he flared up. And then: "I haven't been wandering about."
"Come, come, I've----" the man broke off quickly; he could not say: "I've seen you"--so he said: "We've seen you."
Wolfgang got very red. Oh!--they had spied on him--no doubt to-day--had crept after him? He was not even safe from their prying looks so far away. He was furious. "How can you say 'that woman.' She isn't a woman."