"They are grown up and gone. Out into the world. Some far away in other countries. Ah, yes. One is lonely—" The Baroness became loftily plaintive. "It is the lot of parents. Lonely, lonely. I had five daughters. It was a great relief to get them all married. There was naturally the danger where there were so many of some of them staying with us always."
"But then you wouldn't have been lonely," said Ingeborg.
"But then, Frau Pastor, they would not have been married."
"No. And then," said Ingeborg, interested, "you wouldn't have been able to feel lonely."
The Baroness gazed at her.
"These things are nice, you know," said Ingeborg, leaning forward again in her interest. "One does like it somehow—being sad, you know, and thinking how lonely one is. Of course it's much more delicious to be happy, but not being happy has its jollinesses. There's a perfume...." She sought about in her mind—"It's like a wet day. It looks gloomy and miserable compared to what yesterday was like, but there is an enjoyment. And things"—she hesitated, groping—"things seem to grow. Different ones. Yet they're beautiful, too."
But the Baroness, who did not follow and did not want to, for it was not her business to listen to her pastor's wife, drooped an inquiring eye again over Ingeborg's body and cut her tendency to talk more than was becoming in her position short by remarking that she was still very thin.
When they had sat there till the coffee was cold Ingeborg, in a pause of the talk, got up to go.
The three others stared at her without moving. Even her own Robert stared uncomprehending. It seemed a lame thing to have to explain that she was now going home, but that was what she did at last murmur down to the motionless and surprised Baroness.
"Are you not feeling well?" inquired the Baroness.