"As if I were dead. You sometimes really are beyond words ridiculous."
"I expect it's because I've had so little education," she said meekly.
At tea-time almost every day Herr Dremmel joined them in the garden, and the conversation became stately. The sketches were produced, and he made polite comments. He discussed art with Ingram, and Ingram discussed fertilizers with him, and as neither knew anything about the other's specialty they discussed by force of intelligence. Ingeborg poured out the tea and listened full of pride in them both. She thought how much they must be liking and admiring each other. Robert's sound sense, his quaint and often majestic English, his obviously notable scientific attainments must, she felt sure, deeply impress Ingram. And of course to see and speak to the great Ingram every day could not but give immense gratification to Robert, now that he had become aware of who he was. She sat between the two men in her old-fashioned voluminous white frock, looking from one to the other with eager pride while they talked. She did not say anything herself out of respect for such a combination of brains, but she was all ears. She drank the words in. It was more mind-widening she felt even than the Clarion.
Ingram hated tea-time at the parsonage. Every day it was more of an effort to meet Herr Dremmel's ceremoniousness appropriately, and his scientific thirst for facts about art bored Ingram intolerably. He detested the large soft creases of his clothes and the way they buttoned and bulged between the buttonings. He disliked him for having sleeves and trousers that were too long. He shuddered at the thought of the six children. He did not want to hear about super-phosphates, and resented having regularly every afternoon to pretend he did; and he did want, and this became a growing wish and a growing awkwardness, to make love to Herr Dremmel's wife.
Herr Dremmel's large unconsciousness of such a possibility annoyed him, particularly his obliviousness to the attractiveness of Ingeborg. He would certainly deserve, thought Ingram, anything he got. It was scandalous not to take more care of a little thing like that. Every day at tea-time he was enraged by this want of care in Herr Dremmel, and every day before and after tea he was engrossed, if abortive efforts to philander can be called so, in not taking care of her himself.
"You see," said Ingeborg when he commented on the immense personal absences and withdrawals of Herr Dremmel, "Robert is very great. He's wonderful! The things he does with just grains! And of course if one is going to achieve anything one has to give up every minute to it. Why, even when he loved me he usedn't to—"
"Even when he loved you?" interrupted Ingram. "What, doesn't he now?"
"Oh, yes, yes," she said quickly, flushing. "I meant—of course he does. And besides, one always loves one's wife."
"No, one doesn't."
"Yes, one does."