Thekla wiped her eyes. A little pause fell between them, and in it they may have both remembered vanished, half-forgotten days when life had looked differently to them, when they had never thought to sit by their own fireside and discuss suicide. The husband spoke first; with a reluctant, half-shamed smile, “Thekla, I tell you what, I make the bargain with you; you git me back that place, I don't do it again, 'less you let me; you don't git me back that place, you don't say notings to me.”
The apron dropped from the withered, brown hands to the floor. Again there was silence; but not for long; ghastly as was the alternative, the proposal offered a chance to escape from the terror that was sapping her heart.
“How long will you give me, papa?” said she.
“I give you a week,” said he.
Thekla rose and went to the door; as she opened it a fierce gust of wind slashed her like a knife, and Lieders exclaimed, fretfully, “what you opening that door for, Thekla, letting in the wind? I'm so cold, now, right by the fire, I most can't draw. We got to keep a fire in the base-burner good, all night, or the plants will freeze.”
Thekla said confusedly that something sounded like a cat crying. “And you talking like that it frightened me; maybe I was wrong to make such bargains———”
“Then don't make it,” said Lieders, curtly, “I aint asking you.”
But Thekla drew a long breath and straightened herself, saying, “Yes, I make it, papa, I make it.”
“Well, put another stick of wood in the stove, will you, now you are up?” said Lieders, shrugging his shoulders, “or I'll freeze in spite of you! It seems to me it grows colder every minute.”
But all that day he was unusually gentle with Thekla. He talked of his youth and the struggles of the early days of the firm; he related a dozen tales of young Lossing, all illustrating some admirable trait that he certainly had not praised at the time. Never had he so opened his heart in regard to his own ideals of art, his own ambitions. And Thekla listened, not always comprehending but always sympathizing; she was almost like a comrade, Kurt thought afterward.