'Oh, come now,' said I, very politely as I thought.
Then he really got into a rage, and asked me what I could possibly know about it, and I said I didn't know anything; and still he stormed and grew more and more like a terrified hare, frightening himself by his own words; and at last, dropping his voice, he confessed that he had one particularly deadly fear, a fear that haunted him and gave him no rest, that the wicked would not burn eternally but would freeze.
'Oh,' said I shrinking; for it was a bitter day, and the northeast wind was thundering among the hills.
'Great cold,' he said, fixing me with his hare's eyes, 'seems to me incomparably more terrible than great heat.'
'Oh, incomparably,' I agreed, edging nearer to the stove. 'Only listen to that wind.'
'So will it howl about us through eternity,' said he.
'Oh,' I shivered.
'Piercing one's unprotected—everything about us will be unprotected then—one's unprotected marrow, and turning it to ice within us.'
'But we won't have any marrows,' said I.
'No marrows? Fräulein Rose-Marie, we shall have everything that will hurt.'