me you can go
alone."

"Oh, yes, of course I know now. But it's nice to go to the wood with
you," said the child ingratiatingly, hanging on her mother's arm.

She was almost as tall as her mother now, their shoulders were on the
same level; they could have been taken for sisters. The black-haired
woman with [Pg 144] her velvety, sparkling eyes was certainly more
beautiful, but there was such a gentle, happy expression on the girl's
face that made one forgetful of her freckles and her pale blue eyes.

"How father will feast," said Rosa, and pressed her mother's arm.
"Shall you prepare them for him this evening?"

"I shall prepare them for him this evening," repeated the woman
absent-mindedly. Her thoughts were already far ahead. Would he suffer
when he had eaten them, as Marianna had said? She trembled. But there
must be no compassion. Had she not suffered, suffered agonies from the
very first hour he had come to her mother's sewing-room and had
stretched out his coarse fingers to take her? She did not like him, no,
she had never liked him. And she disliked him more than ever since he
had begun to drink, since he had returned one evening from the inn dead
drunk; and now he often came home so intoxicated that Marianna and
Jendrek had to take him under the arms and drag him into the house. If
he ate some of the mushrooms, and the Holy Virgin would stand by him,
he would close his eyes immediately afterwards. That would be the best
thing for him. Had he not said the last time he was drunk and was
crying so bitterly, "I don't suit this place. When my Sophia is a
widow, will she love me more than she does now?" Yes, she would. He was
quite right, and he had felt it dully in his intoxication. A monument
should be erected to his memory, as beautiful a cross as could be
ordered in Gradewitz, or even in Gnesen. If only he would depart, it
only he would depart and leave her in peace.

The woman's feelings towards her husband became almost tender. She
would make the mushrooms very [Pg 145] nice, and neither spare the
butter nor the cream.

They should taste very, very good.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

As mother and daughter left the Przykop they saw Mr. Tiralla standing
at the garden gate looking out for them. He was longing for his supper,
for which he felt an aching void. But there was another kind of void
which tortured him still more. Now Sophia had even taken the child away
with her