"But I don't boast of being a fine lady."
At that moment the little boy rushed in.
"Mamma, are you coming to dinner?"
"Yes, in a moment."
Frederick arose. At the same instant, Marthe made her appearance.
He could not make up his mind to go away, and, with a look of entreaty:
"These women you speak of are very unfeeling, then?"
"No, but deaf when it is necessary to be so."
And she remained standing on the threshold of her room with her two children beside her. He bowed without saying a word. She mutely returned his salutation.
What he first experienced was an unspeakable astonishment. He felt crushed by this mode of impressing on him the emptiness of his hopes. It seemed to him as if he were lost, like a man who has fallen to the bottom of an abyss and knows that no help will come to him, and that he must die. He walked on, however, but at random, without looking before him. He knocked against stones; he mistook his way. A clatter of wooden shoes sounded close to his ear; it was caused by some of the working-girls who were leaving the foundry. Then he realised where he was.