“Gott sei Dank, that’s over,” said Lothar. “Take off your veil, little wife. It is impossible to kiss a woman properly through a veil.”
“People can see in,” said Brenda doubtfully.
“What do I care?” cried Lothar, and strained her fiercely to him.
That sort of thing went on all through the honeymoon, and Brenda found it wearing. If Lothar wanted a veil off he said so without any consideration for her, and if he wanted to put his arm round her he did not mind who looked on. In fact, he walked her up and down the terrace of a Swiss hotel so interlaced that she knew every one English must be laughing at them; but she submitted rather than to risk an explosion of temper. He had no control over his temper, she soon found; and quite childish trifles roused it. Wherever they went, sound and fury went with them, so that she dreaded a meal because it usually meant a row with a waiter. She could see that every one who served him hated him, and she knew that his arrogance was never served as well as, for instance, her father’s considerate politeness. His behavior to her was uxorious and tyrannical, a blend that could not please a girl as detached and fastidious as Brenda. If she had been blindly in love with him, she might have borne to be adored, scolded, kissed, bullied, checked here and ordered there in a whirlwind of proprietary ardor. But she never had been blindly in love, and marriage did not make her so. There must be something wanting in one of them, she thought, some magnetic quality in him that would have fascinated her, or some strain of the elemental woman in her that would have surrendered to a mate with a club. When it was time to go to Berlin she felt relieved. He would be hard at work at once, he told her, and she would have many lonely hours. She looked forward to them.
About their arrival in Berlin he preserved a resolute silence that vexed her. He would not tell her whether they were to stay with his parents or in a hotel or in rooms till their home was ready for them, nor would he say in what quarter he thought of living or whether they were to have a flat or what he called a villa. When she questioned him about these matters he evaded her and enlarged on the perfect taste and judgment exercised by Little Mamma and his sisters in domestic matters. He said again and again that though Elsa’s husband was rich and Mina’s comparatively poor, they were both so blessed in their wives that their existence was one of unbroken comfort. In fact, they were men any man must envy.
“If you model yourself on my sisters in all ways, you will make me happy,” he said.
“When you talk like that you remind me that I want to be happy myself,” said Brenda, who was finding unsuspected and disturbing wells of anger in herself at times.
“A woman’s happiness lies in self-sacrifice and devotion to others. At least with us it does. Our ideas ...”
“Your ideas about women are out of date,” said Brenda. “You will find them all in our older poets.”
“You talk nonsense, my little treasure, and if you did not look so pretty in that white peignoir you would make me angry. My ideas about women are the right ones. At any rate they will govern your conduct in future. We have women in Berlin with what you call advanced opinions, but no one pays the least attention to them. We do not even allow a woman to attend a political meeting.”