"You hold yourself aloof from all your neighbours. You seem to have forgotten even the way to Uhlenfelde."
"Ho, ho!"
"It used to be the custom for you to come over to Uhlenfelde on Christmas Day."
"You might have come here as easily."
Ulrich looked at him in stupefaction. For the first time it struck him that, like more ordinary friendships, theirs might be subject to friction. So, in a gentler and almost caressing tone, he went on--
"As you didn't come to me, I was compelled to come to you. But I regarded it as my duty not to leave Felicitas yesterday, after being away so long. Putting yesterday out of the question, Felicitas tells me that you have been only once to Uhlenfelde during my absence, and that quite recently."
"The hypocritical creature!" he said to himself, and he felt a kind of melancholy admiration for her powers of dissimulation.
"Your wife is not you," he said, with a feeble attempt at emulating her.
"But she is part of me," responded Ulrich. "And it would have given me pleasure, now that things are straight between you, if----"
"Oh yes, perfectly so," he scoffed inwardly, and a short bitter laugh, which he could not check in time, made Ulrich halt in the middle of a sentence to give his friend another amazed scrutiny.