"Well, Robert?" said Ingeborg, smiling at him round the coffee pot, a smile in which lurked the joyful importance of the evening before.
"Well, Little One?" he said absently, not looking at her.
"Well, Robert?" she said again, challengingly.
"What is it, Little One?" he asked, looking up with the slight irritation of the interrupted.
"What? You're not pleased any more?" she asked, pretending indignation.
"Pleased about what?"
She stared at him at this without pretending anything.
"About what?" she repeated, her lips dropping apart.
He had forgotten.
She thought this really very extraordinary. She poured herself out a cup of coffee slowly, thinking. He had forgotten. The thing he had said so often that he wanted most was a thing he could forget, once he had the certain promise of it, in a night. The candles on the Christmas tree in the corner were not more burned out and finished than his tender intensity of feeling of the evening before.