Trude trembles in every limb. She calls him by name, puts her arm round his neck, tries to remove his hands from his face, and, when all this avails nothing, she bursts into tears herself. When he hears her sobbing, he raises his head and looks about in a dazed sort of way. His gaze rests on the clothes hanging upon the wall, boy's clothes of many years ago. He knows them well. His mother used to keep them as relics at the bottom of her linen-press, and once showed them to him with the words: "These were worn by your little dead brother." Since her death the clothes had disappeared. Nor had he ever thought of them again. A shudder runs through his frame.
"Come," he says to Trade, who is still crying to herself, and they both leave the office. Trade wants to get out of the mill forthwith.
"First take the key back," he says.
Together they descend the stairs leading down to the machinery, and, when the key hangs in its old place, they both rush out into the open air as if pursued by furies.
With this hour their intercourse has lost its old harmlessness. They have become participants in guilt. The feeling of guilt rests with terrible weight on their youthful souls. They pity each other, for each reads the story of his own conscience in the other's silent depression, suppressed sighs and ill-concealed absent-mindedness--but neither can help the other.
How gladly they would confess their fault to Martin.--But it would not do to go to him together and say, "Forgive us--we have sinned"--it would really look too theatrical--and if one of them takes the confession upon himself, he gains no mean advantage over the other. They are both equally closely connected with Martin and whoever is the first to break silence must perforce appear to him as the more upright and less guilty one. Besides, they have vowed absolute secrecy to each other and feel all the less inclined to break their word, as they are afraid to converse openly on the subject.
Thus more and more a sort of clandestine understanding is nurtured between them; every harmless word spoken at table has for them a special, deep significance; every look they exchange becomes an emblem of secret agreement.
Martin notices nothing of all this; only now and again it strikes him that "his two children" have lost a good deal of their old cheerfulness and that they no longer sing so merrily. He makes no remark, however, for he thinks they may have quarreled and are still sulking with one another.
The following week, when Martin has once again shut himself up in his office, Trude takes heart and says: "I say, Hans, it is nonsense for us to fret ourselves. We will let the stupid affair rest."
He makes a melancholy face and says: "If only it were possible!"