But Frida did not show herself very often now. She already wore a dress that reached to her ankles, attended a sewing class out of school-hours, and after her confirmation, which was to be a year next Easter she was to go "to business," as she said very importantly.
"I shall give her notice," said Käte one evening, when Cilia had cleared the table and she was sitting quite alone with her husband.
"Oh!" He had not really been listening. "Why?"
"Because of her behaviour." The woman's voice vibrated with suppressed indignation more than that, with passionate excitement. Her eyes, which were generally golden brown and gentle, became dark and sombre.
"Why, you're actually trembling! What is the matter now?" He laid the paper he was about to read aside, quite depressed. There was some trouble with the boy again; nothing else excited her in that manner.
"I can't have it any longer." Her voice was hard, had lost its charm. "And I won't stand it. Just think, when I came home to-day I was away an hour towards evening, hardly an hour good gracious, you cannot always be spying, you demean yourself in your own eyes." Her hands closed over each other, gripped each other so tightly that the knuckles showed quite white. "I had left him at his desk, he had so much to do, and when I returned not a stroke had been done. But I heard--heard them downstairs, at the back of the house near the kitchen door."
"Heard whom?"
"Wolfgang and her, of course--Cilia. I had only been away quite a short time."
"Well--and then?"
She had stopped and sighed, full of a deep distress which drove away the anger from her eyes.