When he came out again, he felt that he had paid her back.
“You’re not the only one. If you don’t want me, all right! There’s somebody else that wants me—somebody who’s rich, with a fine house, and pearls. What do I care for you?”
In his heart he said this to Ingeborg, but not aloud. He dared not. For all his great anger against her, there was something in her, some strange dignity and power, that checked him.
He took her to the corner of his street.
“All right!” he said. “Now I’m going somewhere else.”
He did not want to look at her again, but, as she walked off, he had to look. There she went, so slender and little, so unattainable!
“What have I done, anyhow?” he asked himself, with a sort of amazement.
He did not know, and yet a terrible sense of guilt oppressed him; and because he would not be humbled, not by any human creature, not by his own soul, he would go to Mabel. He was reckless now.
Unfortunately, Mabel would not be expecting him for several hours. He drove about at random. At first he made up his mind that he would never go back to the house where Ingeborg was. Never mind about the clothes he had there! Let them go—what did he care?
As the dusk came, and his bitterness still grew, he changed his mind and turned back there. He was going to tell Ingeborg, going to tell all of them. He wanted to do some reckless, arrogant thing, to show them what a fellow he was.