She paused, but the Baroness continued not to commit herself.
"I can bear anything," said Ingeborg, with a great show of pride and a voice that trembled, "if it's—if it's reasonable."
"It is not reasonable," said the Baroness. "It is the Will of God."
"Oh, that's the same thing, the same thing," said Ingeborg, throwing herself back on her cushions and nervously pulling some white pinks she had been smelling to pieces.
She was ashamed of her terror. But all that evening she was restless and nervous, struggling with this new feeling of fear. She could not keep still, but walked about the sitting-room while Robert ate his supper at the table, pressing her cold hands together, trying to reason herself into tranquillity again.
She stood still a moment watching Robert's quiet black back as he bent over his supper. Then she went over to him impulsively and rubbed both her hands quickly through his hair, which had not been cut for some time, making it stand up on ends.
"There!" she said. "Now you look really sweet." And she bent and kissed him, lingeringly, on the back of his neck. He was near her, he was alive, she could hold on to him for a little before she went alone into whatever it was of icy and awful and unknown that waited for her.
"Good little wife," he said, still going on eating, but putting his left arm round her while his right continued to do what was necessary with the supper, and not looking up.
His affection at this time had watered down into a mild theory. She was not a wife to him, though he called her so; she was a werdende Mutter. This, Herr Dremmel told himself when he, too, felt bored by the length of the months, is a most honourable, creditable, and respectable condition; but no man can feel warm towards a condition. His little sheep had disappeared into the immensities of the werdende Mutter. He would be glad when she was restored to him.
The next day she got a letter from Mrs. Bullivant, dated from the Master's House, Ananias College, Oxford.