I said:
“If it was someone who wished to separate Eva and me at any price, he has gained his end. God's curse be on him!”
Herr Mack looked at me suspiciously. He murmured something about the fine funeral. Nothing had been spared.
I sat admiring the alertness of his mind. He would have no compensation for the boat that my landslide had crushed.
“Oh, but surely,” I said, “will you not have some payment for the boat and the tar-bucket and the brush?”
“No, my dear Lieutenant,” he answered. “How could you think of such a thing?” And he looked at me with hatred in his eyes.
For three weeks I saw nothing of Edwarda. Yes, once I met her at the store: when I went to buy some bread, she stood inside the counter looking over some different sorts of cloth stuff. Only the two assistants were there besides.
I greeted her aloud, and she looked up, but did not answer. It occurred to me that I could not ask for bread while she was there; I turned to the assistants and asked for powder and shot. While they were weighing it out, I watched her.
A grey dress, much too small for her, with the buttonholes worn; her flat breast heaved restlessly. How she had grown that summer! Her brow was knit in thought; those strangely curved eyebrows stood in her face like two riddles; all her movements were grown more mature. I looked at her hands; the contour of her long, delicate fingers moved me violently, made me tremble. She was still turning over the stuffs.
I stood wishing that Æsop would run to her behind the counter—then I could call him back at once and apologise. What would she say then?