ble and eyed her calmly: "You must not agitate yourself
like that if the boy feels a little seedy for once in a way. Such
things do happen, every mother has to go through that."

"But not to that degree--not to that awful degree!" She screamed out
aloud, overwhelmed with pain and anger. And then she seized her
husband's hand and squeezed it between both hers that were cold and
damp, and whispered, half stifled: "He was drunk--quite drunk--dead
drunk!"

"Really?" The man frowned, but the smile did not quite disappear
from his lips. "Well, I'll have a word with the boy when he has
finished sleeping. Dead drunk, you say?"

She nodded.

"It won't have been quite as bad as that, I suppose. Still, to be
drunk--that must not happen again. To take a little too much"--he
shrugged his shoulders and a smile passed over his face as at some
pleasant memory--"by Jove, who has been young and not taken a little
too much for once in a way? Oh, I can still remember the first time I
had done so. The headache after it was appalling, but the drop too much
itself was fine, splendid! I would not like to have missed that."

"You--you've been drunk too?" She stared at him, with eyes
distended.

"Drunk--you mustn't call that drunk exactly. A little too much," he
corrected. "You mustn't exaggerate like that, Kate." And then
he went on with his dinner as if nothing had happened, as if the
conversation had not succeeded in depriving him of his appetite.

She was in a fever. When would Wolfgang wake? And what would happen
then?

Towards evening she heard his step upstairs, heard him close his
window and then open it again, heard his low whistle that always
sounded like a bird chirping. Paul was walking up and down in the
garden, smoking his cigar. She was sitting in the veranda for the first
time that spring, looking down at her husband in the garden. The
weather was mild and warm. Then she heard Wolfgang approaching; she
made up her mind she would not turn her head, she felt so ashamed, but
she turned it nevertheless.

He was standing in the doorway leading from the dining-room to the
veranda; behind him was twilight, in front of him the brightness of the
evening sun. He blinked and pressed his eyes together, the sun shone on
his face and made it flame--or was it red because he felt so ashamed?
What would he say now? How would he begin? Her heart throbbed; she
could not have spoken a single word, her throat felt as though she were
chok