Victor would have liked, with his glowing gaze, to hide her in a burning bush, so that nobody else could approach her. One evening he forgot himself in Höflinger's presence. Spiele had teased him about his red necktie, which began to look black with wear; she asked whether he would always stay a Garibaldi and offered to sew a new one for him, if he would let her remove the old. He agreed; nobody noticed the glow and the tension in his eyes. When she had unfastened the little red rag and was running away with it laughing, he quickly grabbed her hand and caught it between his crooked horse-teeth. Spiele cried out and tore herself away. Victor laughed with embarrassment and excitement. Höflinger looked up startled. The tailor's daughter seemed angry and scolded Victor; but her scolding was music to his ears. When he finally noticed the husband's cold and disapproving glare, he showed his teeth again and remarked aggressively: "People ought to be able to take a joke!" Then he struck the table with his fist and went out quickly.
After that incident Höflinger walked up and down in silence and listened to Spiele, who set about removing a double veil from his eyes. She told him what a distant and strange husband he was, his head filled with the business of other people and his heart never heeding the need and the loneliness of his wife. Absorbed by other interests, he seemed to leave it to her whether she should continue to hope for the fulfillment of her longing, or like him, however young in years, passively give up all hope. She told him what wrong he was directly committing against himself and her, by renouncing what after all, as he well knew, the law of nature would not force her to forego for a long time to come. She left him no room for doubt, that she was going by all means within her power to avoid being cheated out of happiness by his attitude. A large, extensive organization was no compensation for the absence of a single innocent little being, which was perhaps denied them on account of his interest in the other. Not to lose a single trump, she pointed to the fiery young boarder as an example of a real lover. She took Höflinger by the nose and made him follow all the successive steps in the development of her heart's cause. She did not even fail to show him that a good willing boy was suffering for a wife's faithfulness toward her absent husband, who unsuspectingly and self-complacently was busy with alien things. She poured such a storm of good arguments and sound object-lessons upon the absorbed mind of her partner, that she really succeeded in arresting his attention.
Höflinger finally stopped and looked at her in astonishment. He had never noticed that his wife had grown from a little girl into a mature woman. It was the first time that he heard her talk like that, and her speech rang so true that one could not help agreeing with her in general. This was what that man of reality enjoyed most in all her argumentation. His eyes grew clearer and clearer before her. What her dances and her tricks had not accomplished, was achieved by this violent thunderstorm. When he had got over his first amazement, he began to rejoice in every fibre of his being; and his face showed a youthful and animated glow which pleased her so much that she allowed the storm to pass by and to be followed by a partial rainbow. Finally her magnetism so overpowered him, that in spite of the jealousy which gnawed and stung, as she had desired it should, he began to laugh. His. eyes were so kindly and so enterprising, that she joined in his laughter, and morning and night were turned into another wedding-day. Victor had been watching behind a tree to see whether Höflinger would abuse his wife for the incident of the necktie. He witnessed a scene which filled him with burning misery from head to foot. He saw Spiele wrestling with her husband, laughing and brushing her hair from her forehead and apparently running away from him. He firmly believed that she really feared him and suffered his amorous mood only because she could not help herself. At the end he heard Höflinger whistle a tune, while he was locking the door of the cottage and bolting the sitting-room, and saw him, candle in hand, follow his wife to her bedroom. Victor decided that this evening cried for revenge in his own and in Spiele's name.
One day a thunderbolt came down before his eyes. Höflinger took leave for three days and Victor was to remain alone with the idol and the wife. The long one had to take this trip in the interest of the workingmen's consumers' league which was now about to be realized. Pratteler spent half of each night on his wheel. He ate nothing and drank much. In those days he sought the midday rest with the other laborers and lay down where Höflinger was wont to take his nap. Having to pay so much more attention to the machine used up his nervous energy, already much tried, and wore him out. He wanted to sleep, but the wild and foolish notion that he might take the place of Höflinger at night, too, banished the rest he craved. Then he jumped up and went about in the courts and between the steel monsters, wherever the spirit of revolt was brooding and whispering into his ears wild and extravagant words. He breathed more freely when the siren called the herd to work. His task of serving the idol filled him with a dull indifferent hatred; he despised the monster. Sometimes he gave vent to all the bitterness and the scorn his breast was harboring by spitting into the revolving shining face. But that had not the slightest effect. The idol continued to screech and wheeze, and its claw greedily grabbed the next iron bar. Then Victor turned away weary and sad at heart, and mounted the iron staircase to attend to the oiling.
At noon Spiele came as usual through the dark gate, jumped off her wheel in her light-footed way and approached his place with a nod. Recently she was inclined to be late and no longer waited in the crowd. The first day, eager to cut short the ceremony of taking the lunch-pail from her, he managed to bump his head against hers. She looked straight at him, surprised at his haste. He trembled like a wall hit by a shot, and did not know whether to fall backward, or forward into her arms. Both blushed. He exclaimed with embarrassment: "Hopla!" and set the pail down. She scolded him for neglecting his lunch, while his trembling fingers rolled a cigarette and he lapsed into a moody silence. The next day he let her do everything herself. He ate a little, while she explained to him that it was unhealthy for him to be so much on his wheel. Besides, he should raise his handle-bar, for it could not be good for a stomach to float like a cloud over the ground. It also shocked the nervous system too violently, when the arms alone bore the weight of the body, as was natural when the wheel leaped and bumped over the uneven roadbed. Submissively and somewhat cautiously he replied that she might be right. That evening he obediently drew up the handle-bar by the width of a hand, and lowered the saddle. It was hard for him; but since she was solicitous about his health, there was some consolation in it. He thought she would not care, if she did not love him a little.
When he returned late from a tavern, his passion got the better of him. He went to the door of the sitting-room which led to the bedroom, and firmly pressed down the latch--not softly, but as if he had a right to enter. But the door was bolted. He rapped. Nothing moved; the door remained locked. With aching limbs he went up the stairs to his garret-room; he felt as if smoke were rising from his lungs and his very vitals were on fire. A tempest of thoughts was brewing in his head. In the morning he drank his coffee, pale and tortured. Spiele was invisible. It was not her habit to be present; she always retired once more after serving the men's breakfast and before Victor appeared. But that morning he considered it a special measure upon which she had decided--or a proof of guilt. He had all the day to decide which of the two it was. At noon he asked Spiele incidentally, whether Höflinger were sure to return that night and observed her from the corner of his eyes. She said "yes" in a rather absent-minded manner, which he at once interpreted as secret sharing of his impatience. Heaving a deep breath he opened all doors to the remotest back gate of his soul to give free entrance to any idea that would promise help. After work he was busy with the idol a few minutes longer, as though he had to put something in order. In reality he loosened some screws and unfastened a coupling. Then he threw himself once more upon his wheel. He did not return for supper. He sat in the inn down in the valley and only started for the house when he was sure that Höflinger had returned and the couple had retired.
The next morning at breakfast Höflinger scanned him with a searching glance. "Did everything go well with the saw?" he asked with concern. "Why should it not!" replied Victor sulkily and rose; the last mouthful stuck in his throat. When he rode to the works beside him, Höflinger noticed the change in his wheel and nodded approvingly: "You are right to obey my wife's suggestion, Pratteler," said he, and added: "You should also give up your extravagant speeding and pedaling for hours at a stretch." Victor was silent. Later other workingmen joined them and greeted Höflinger eagerly. But he was no more communicative than at other times.
They entered the machine-shop. Before the gable-wall in the background towered the idol. Its immense disk shone treacherously in the morning light. Victor's heart was beating. The siren howled. The belting-gear cracked and rolled up. The first shot rang out behind the halls. Höflinger pressed down the lever and let the idol run. It rang the bell and whistled; but there was a crunching noise. Höflinger listened and hastily threw back the lever; the disk made a sweeping movement. Silently he went up to the iron gallery. After a moment which seemed an hour to Victor, he came down again. His face was grave; his eyes sought Victor. "Did you do anything to the machine, Pratteler?" asked he with troubled mien. "Is something wrong?" replied Victor much too loud and angry at the ring of his voice. "It ran well until work was over last night. After that I was not near it." Höflinger cleared his throat. "Then it is sabotage," said he dejectedly. "But it is senseless and murderous sabotage. If I had not heard that something was wrong, we two should not be going about much longer." He went to the tool box and again ascended the gallery.
Victor did not dare to follow him until he called. They both repaired the damage done. Victor's hands were cold as ice in all the heat that rose from the half-glowing iron blocks. At this moment he felt a violent hatred of Höflinger and came near throwing him from the gallery. Höflinger said only that the perpetrator would be expelled from the organization as soon as discovered. That word sounded like a judgment to Victor's ears. It gripped and shocked him in a depth of consciousness he had not yet realized. He began to tremble. He stood unknowingly under the jurisdiction of the power called social morality, and his highflown democratic notions were already so strongly modified, that he came near confessing his guilt to Höflinger. Yet the impulse only intensified his hatred of the man who by his laconic and deeply ordered life deprived him of one freedom after another, until it became an unendurable torture. He had lost his heart to Spiele's charm over which the enemy had unlimited mastery. Now his self-will, too, was being shattered and pushed under the feet of the marching multitude. Something had to happen to give the world breathing-space. A master shot should explode that whole damnable scheme in which his life was about to be sunk and buried.