She falls into a chair, comforted, relieved, saved. The blissful feeling makes her kind heart overflow and she is solicitous about her husband:
"You are so pale. Is there anything wrong with you, dear?"
"I am not cold," he answers.
"But has anything happened? Your face looks so strangely drawn."
The husband answers:
"No, I'm smiling. This is going to be my way of smiling. I want this grimace to be my special property."
She listens to his short, hoarse words and doesn't understand them, can't make them out at all. What can he mean?
But suddenly he throws his arms around her with a grip of iron, with terrible force, and whispers close against her face:
"What do you say to giving him a pair of horns ... the man who's just gone ... give him a pair of horns, eh?"
She utters a scream and calls the maid. He lets her go with a quiet, dry laugh, with his mouth agape and slapping both his thighs.