"It seems to me quite late enough to go to bed," says Katrine, taking a silver candlestick from the mantel-piece. "It is a quarter-past ten."
Suddenly the captain grasps her by the wrist. "Stay!" he says, sternly.
"You have come back in a very bad humour," Katrine remarks, with a contemptuous smile. "The grass-widow must have proved unkind. Your delay in returning led me to suppose the contrary."
The captain looks at his wife with an odd expression. Was it possible she could take sufficient interest in him to be jealous?
"I have not seen the grass-widow," he rejoins, after a short pause.
"That is, you did not find her at home? How very sad!"
"I did not go to Glockenstein."
"Ah, indeed! I thought----"
"You are quite right," he said, with an air of bravado. "After the very kind and choice words with which in the presence of an auditor you dismissed me, I certainly whipped up the horses in order to reach Glockenstein with all speed. When angels will have nothing to do with us, we are fain to go for consolation to the devil: he is sure to be at hand. Frau Ruprecht would have received me with open arms; I am by no means"--with a forced laugh--"so insignificant in her eyes; for her I am quite a hero, and what would you have? she is stupid, but she is pretty and young, and an amount of consideration from any woman flatters a poor fellow who is never without the consciousness of his inferiority in the eyes of his clever wife at home."
"Ah! really?" Katrine sneers. "May I beg you to make a little haste with your explanations?--the lamp is beginning to burn dimly."