I know? I don't know."

"You know very well. Don't tell a lie." Kate seized hold of Frida
violently by both her slender arms. She would have liked to catch hold
of her fair hair and scream aloud whilst tearing it out: "My boy! Give
me back my boy!" But she had not the strength to go on shaking her
until she had forced her to confess.

Frida's blue eyes looked at her quite openly, quite frankly, even if
there seemed to be a slight anxiety in her glance. "I've not seen him
for a long time, ma'am," she said honestly. And then her voice grew
softer and there was a certain anxiety in it: "He used to come here
formerly, but he never does now--does he, mother?"

Frau Laemke shook her head: "No, never." She did not feel at all at
her ease, everything seemed so strange to her: Frau Schlieben in their
cellar, and what did she want with Frida? Something had happened, there
was something wrong. But whatever it was her Frida was innocent, Frau
Schlieben must know that. And so she took courage: "If you think that
my Frida has anything to do with it, ma'am, you're very much mistaken.
My Frida has walked out a long time with Flebbe--Hans Flebbe, the
coachman's son, he's a grocer--and besides, Frida is a respectable
girl. What are you thinking about my daughter? But it's always like
that, a girl of our class cannot be respectable, oh no!" The insulted
mother got quite aggressive now. "My Frida was a very good friend of
your Wolfgang, and I am also quite fond of him when I felt so wretched
last summer he sent me fifty marks that I might go to Fangschleuse for
three weeks and get better--but let him try to come here again now,
I'll turn him out, the rascal!" Her pale face grew hot and red in her
vague fear that something might be said against her Frida.

Frida rushed up to her and threw her arm round her shoulders: "Oh,
don't get angry, mother. You're not to excite yourself, or you'll get
that pain in your stomach again."

Frida became quite energetic now. With her arm still round her
mother's shoulders she turned her fair head to Kate: "You'll have to go
somewhere else, ma'am, I can't tell you anything about your son. Mother
and I were speaking quite lately about his never coming here now. And I
wrote him a note the other day, telling him to come and see us--because
I had not seen him for ever so long, and--and--well, because he always
liked to be with me. But he hasn't answered it. I've certainly
not done anything to him. But he h