"She is a simple woman. Consequently she never knows anything. Mother! Mother!"
"Does she know you're married?" asked Ingeborg, the doubt growing bigger.
"She is a simple woman. Consequently—" He broke off and stared down at her, reflecting. "Is it possible that I forgot to tell her?" he said.
It evidently was possible, for at that moment Frau Dremmel came slowly up some steps at the end of the passage from a lower region, and perceiving her son and a strange young woman stood still and said nothing whatever.
"Mother, this is my wife," said Herr Dremmel, taking Ingeborg's hand and leading her to the motionless figure.
"Ach," said Frau Dremmel, without moving.
"Kiss her, Little One," directed Herr Dremmel.
"Yes, yes," said Ingeborg, blushing a vivid red and going a convulsive step nearer.
Frau Dremmel was regarding her with sombre, unblinking eyes, eyes that had the blankness of pebbles. From her waist downwards she wore a big dark-blue apron. She was entirely undecorated. Her black dress ended at the neck abruptly in its own binding and a hook and eye. Her hair was drawn back into the smallest of knobs. Ingeborg felt suddenly that she herself was a thing of fal-lals—a showy thing, bedizened with a white collar and a hat she had till then considered neat, but that she now knew for a monstrous piece of frippery crushed on to insufficiently pinned-up hair.
"You are married to her?" asked the elder Frau Dremmel, turning her pebble eyes slowly from one to the other.