Wangen was in bed before his wife, and lay looking at her. It took her so long to undress; it was as though she dreaded going to bed. Now and again she looked round bewildered, as if she expected to find the children there after all.
“It’s not my fault this time at any rate,” he thought; “but she’ll lay the blame on to me all the same.”
When at last she was in bed, lying on her back with her hands under her head, looking up at the ceiling, he had an uncomfortable feeling that she was capable of anything, perhaps that very night when he was asleep. A tallow candle was burning on a stool by his bedside, but he dared not put it out.
“Aren’t you going to put out the candle?” she asked in a dull voice, still looking up at the ceiling.
He had to put it out at last. The grey light of the spring night showed in the window, which had no blind, and they both lay with wide-open eyes fixed on this faint light, as if they were afraid of closing them or looking into darkness. Neither of them had any pretext for rising to attend to one or other of the children; so they were forced to lie still and let the thoughts put up their heads out of the night. She seemed to see her father as he was the last time he came to her, saw him down in the garden, heard his opinion of her husband. “Why wasn’t I more compliant then?” she thought. “It’s too late now! I can never make up for it! What have I done?”
Wangen lived over again the scene when he had borrowed the last ten thousand krones. He lied, he exaggerated, he persuaded—and believed in it. That was how it seemed with all his ideals now. He believed in them; they intoxicated him slightly; but just look at the consequences!
He involuntarily began to tremble in his bed, for he felt as if he would have to drag the dead body of the old man after him for ever and ever. Fru Wangen noticed his distress, and it made her own greater. “Is it his fault after all?” she thought, and felt her anger rise. But in that case it would be her fault too. No, he was innocent; he must be innocent. The desire to hold him up insensibly gained the upper hand, and she put out her hand towards him.
“Take hold of my hand, Henry!”
And when their hands lay in one another’s—the two alone together—they were as they had been when they were newly married and fell asleep with fingers intertwined.