"I do not wish to impose my thanks upon you. If the expression of them displeases you so much, I regret that I should have called you hither."
She turned away and was about to leave the room, but the movement brought Ulric to his senses. He took one hasty step forwards.
"My lady--I--forgive me! I would not vex you for the world!"
Eugénie was struck by the passionate, remorseful tone. She stopped and looked at him, seeking in his face for the key to his strange conduct; but his vehement cry for pardon had disarmed her.
"You would not vex me?" she repeated, "but you do not mind how much you hurt other people's feelings by your ungracious ways? The Director's, for instance, and Herr Wilberg's?"
"No, I do not," returned Ulric, "no more than they would mind hurting mine, if the case were reversed. There is no talk of friendliness between the officials and us."
"No?" asked Eugénie in surprise. "I did not know that the officials and the hands were on such bad terms, and Herr Berkow cannot suspect it either, or he would assuredly have tried to mediate."
"Herr Berkow," said Ulric, sharply, "has cared during the last twenty years for every possible thing on the works, except for the welfare of the hands employed, and so it will go on, until we begin caring a little about him, and then--oh, my lady! I was forgetting that you are his son's wife. Forgive me!"
She was silent, a little confounded by his reckless plain-speaking. What she now heard was, in truth, only what had often before been hinted in her presence about her father-in-law, but the terrible bitterness of these words made her feel all the depth of the gulf which lay between him and his subordinates. Whoever brought an accusation against Berkow was sure beforehand of having his daughter-in-law's sympathy. Eugénie had herself had bitter proof of his unscrupulousness, but she was sensible that, as his son's wife, she ought not to make this evident. If she noticed Hartmann's last speech at all, it must be to reprove him, and she preferred to let it pass.
"So you will not accept any mark of our gratitude, not even from my hands?" she began again, waiving the dangerous subject. "Well, then, I can do nothing but tender my thanks to the man who saved me from certain death. Will you reject them, too? I thank you, Hartmann!"