leam like gold, did not brighten up her
face.

His mother was in silk, in light silk, in a dress trimmed with lace,
which only had something that looked like a very transparent veil over
the neck and arms. Oh, now he remembered, she was to meet his father,
who had not come home to dinner that day, in town at eight o'clock, and
go to a party with him. Oh, that was why he had had to come home so
early. As if he could not have got into bed alone.

"You've come so late," she said.

"You could have gone," he said.

"You know, my child, that I'm uneasy if I don't know that you are at
home." She sighed: "How could I have gone?"

He looked at her in surprise: why did she say that? Had somebody
been telling tales about him again? Why was she so funny?

He gazed at her with wide-open eyes, as though she were a perfect
stranger to him in that dress that left her neck and arms so bare. He
put his food into his mouth lost in thought, and munched it slowly. All
at once he had to think a great deal of what he had heard Frau Laemke
tell. His father and mother had never told anything about when _he_ was
born.

And suddenly he stopped eating and launched the question into the
stillness of the room, into the stillness that reigned between him and
her: "When I was born, did it last such a long time too?"

"When what?--who?--you?" She stared at him.

She did not seem to have understood him. So he quickly swallowed the
food he still had in his mouth and said very loudly and distinctly:
"Did it last such a long time when I was born? It lasted very long when
Frida was. Did you scream too, like Frau Laemke?"

"I?--who?--I?" She turned crimson and then very pale. She closed her
eyes for a moment, she felt dizzy; there was a buzzing in her ears. She
jumped up from her chair, she felt she must run away, and still she
could not. She clutched hold of the table with shaking hands, but the
strong oak table had turned into something that shook uncertainly, that
moved up and down, slid about. What--what was the boy saying? O
God!

She bit her lips, drew a deep breath, and was about to say: "Leave
off asking such stupid questions," and yet could not say it. She
struggled with herself. At last she jerked out: "Nonsense. Be quick,
finish eating. Then off to bed at once." Her voice sounded quite
hoarse.

The boy's astonished look fell on her once more. "Why are you all at
once so--so--so horrid? Can't I even ask a question?" And he pushed hi