Herr Dremmel again peered anxiously at her face.
"One of you wonderful people—you magnificent, spacious people. In Redchester we got rid of difficulties by running away. You face them and overcome them. There isn't much doubt, is there, which is the finer?"
He transferred his cigar to the hand that was round her shoulder and spread his right one largely over her forehead. It was quite cool.
"Who," went on Ingeborg enthusiastically, jerking her head away from his hand, "would have a custom that makes calls last five hours without rebelling? You are too splendidly disciplined to rebel. You don't. You just set about finding some way of making the calls endurable, and you hit on the nicest way. I loved that hour in bed. If only I'd known that the other day when your mother came! The relief of it...."
"But my mother—" began Herr Dremmel in a puzzled voice. Then he added with a touch of severity, "Your remarks, my treasure, are not in your usual taste. You forget my mother is a widow."
"Oh? Don't widows?"
"Do not widows what?"
"Go to bed?"
"Now kindly tell me," he said, with an impatience he concealed beneath calm, for he had heard that a husband who wishes to become successfully a father has to accommodate himself to many moods, "what it is you are really talking about."
"Why, about your not explaining things to me in time."