"Go away when you want to and come back when you choose. You've been quite far. You went once to a place the other side of Berlin. Oh, I know it's business you go on, but I don't think that makes it any better—on the contrary, it isn't half as good a reason as going because it's beautiful to go, and fine and splendid. And it isn't as though I even had to ask you to give me money for it. I simply roll in that hundred a year you allow me. I haven't spent a quarter of it for years. My cupboard upstairs is stuffed with notes."
He looked at her, but finding it impossible to discover any meaning in her remarks began to read again.
"Robert—"
With patience he again removed his eyes from his book and looked at her. Beneath the table she was pressing her hands together, twisting them about in her lap.
"Well, Ingeborg?" he said.
"Don't you think it's unworthy, the way women have to ask permission to do things?"
"No," said Herr Dremmel; but he was thinking of the Minusvarianten, and it was mere chance that he did not say Yes.
"When husbands go away they don't ask their wives' permission, and it never would occur to the wives that they ought to. So why should the wives have to ask the husbands'?"
Herr Dremmel gazed at her a moment, and then made a stately, excluding, but entirely kindly movement with his right hand. "Ingeborg," he said, "I am not interested." And he began to read again.
She poured herself out some more tea, drank it hastily and hot, and said with a great effort, "It's nonsense about permissions. I—I'm going to Berlin."