"My patron. He will be incensed that I have not presented you sooner. I forgot him. That will be another day lost. These claims, these social claims—"
He got up and took some agitated steps about the table.
"No sooner," he said, frowning angrily at the path, "has one settled one thing than there appears another. To-day, all day the poor. To-morrow, all day the rich—"
"Do we call continuously all day?"
"—both equally obstinate, both equally encased from head to foot in the impenetrable thick armour of intellectual sloth. How," he inquired, turning to her with all the indignant wrath of the thwarted worker, "is a man to work if he lives in a constant social whirl?"
Ingeborg sat regarding him with astonishment. "He can't," she said. "But—do we whirl, Robert? Would one call what we do here whirling?"
"What? When my work has been neglected all day to-day on behalf of the poor and will be neglected all day to-morrow on behalf of the rich?"
"But why will it take us all day?"
"A man must prepare, he cannot call as he is. He must," said Herr Dremmel with irritable gloom, "wash." And he added with still greater irritation and gloom, "There has to be a clean shirt."
"But—" began Ingeborg.