"Yes."
She was silent.
"It's all the same to me if it meant nothing," he went on. "Then you needn't tell me."
She collapsed again.
"No, it didn't mean anything," she answered.
They began to walk again. The Lieutenant shrugged his epaulettes nervously and said aloud:
"He'd better look out, or he might feel an officer's hand about his ears."
They went in the direction of the summer-house.
Johannes remained seated on the stone for some time, in the same dull pain as before. It was all becoming indifferent to him. The Lieutenant had taken it into his head to suspect him and his fiancé immediately began to defend herself. She said what had to be said, calmed the officer's heart, and walked on with him. And the starlings chattered on the boughs above their heads. Very well. God vouchsafe them a long life.... He had made her a speech at the dinner and torn his heart out; it had cost him sorely to make good and cover up her insolent interruption and she had not thanked him for doing so. She had seized her glass and drunk. Here's your good health, look at me and see how nicely I drink.... By the bye, you should always look at a woman from the side when she's drinking. Let her drink of a cup, a glass, anything you like, but look at her from the side. It's shocking to see what an air she gives herself. She purses up her mouth and dips the extreme tip of it into the drink and she gets desperate if you watch her hand while she is doing it. You must never in any circumstances look at a woman's hand. She can't stand it, she capitulates. She begins at once to draw in her hand, to pose it more and more elegantly, always with the object of concealing a wrinkle, a crookedness of the fingers or a rather misshapen nail. At last she can bear it no longer and asks, quite beside herself: what are you looking at?... She had once kissed him, once, one summer. It was so long ago, God knew if it was even true. How was it, weren't they sitting on a bench? They talked a long time and when they walked away he came so close to her that he touched her arm. On a staircase she had kissed him. I love you, she said.... Now they had gone past, perhaps they were still sitting in the summer-house. The Lieutenant would give him a box on the ears, he said. He heard it quite plainly, he was not asleep, but still he did not get up and come forward. An officer's hand, he said. Oh well, it didn't matter to him....
He rose from the stone and went after them to the summer-house. It was empty. Up in the verandah of the house stood Camilla calling for him: Come along, there was coffee in the garden room. He followed her. The engaged couple were sitting in the garden room; several others were there besides. He took his coffee, retired and found a place.