Fru Adelheid lay on the floor before her chair and pulled the flowers of her bouquet to pieces. Cordt sat with his head leaning on his hand and looked at the flowers.  
“If only you would speak, Cordt.... If only you would ask me something. Why don’t you ask me something?”
 
“What can I ask you?”
 
“Ask me what I am thinking about. Why I have come home so early. Why I have not been here for so long.”
 
“I know all that, Adelheid.”
 
She crossed her hands on her knee and swayed to and fro and looked at him with dark and angry eyes:
 
[112]“Is there anything you do not know, Cordt?”
 
“No.”
 
“I don’t think so either. You know the right and the wrong of everything between heaven and earth. You are never in doubt and never at a loss. You know at once what is good and what is bad; and then you go away and do what is good.”
 
He shook his head and said nothing and she grew still more angry:
 
“You alone know. Whoever does not obey you is lost. There is no room in the house for any but you and those who serve you.”
 
Cordt bent over her and lifted her up in the chair.
 
“Be silent for a little, Adelheid,” he said. “And stay quiet for a little.”
 
But she slipped to the floor again and looked at him defiantly:
 
“I will not sit in that chair,” she said. [113]“Never again. I am not worthy of the honor. You do not know everything, Cordt. You do not know me.”
 
He stroked her hair with his two hands and forced her head back:
 
“Then show yourself to me,” he said.
 
She released her head and her eyes grew moist:
 
“You must not be good to me,” she said. “You don’t know me. I am not the woman you think.”
 
Then she laid her head on the chair and said, softly:
 
“I am so sad, Cordt.”
 
“You will be glad again.”
 
“I daresay,” she said. “But I shall always be sad.”
 
She took the ruined bouquet and laid it on the chair and her cheek upon it. She closed her eyes. Cordt looked at her—she seemed so tired—and they were long silent. Then she said:
 
[114]“It is so cold in here.”
 
And then silence fell upon the room again.
 
“Cordt!”
 
Fru Adelheid sat with her back against the chair and stared into the fire with strange eyes:
 
“Cordt ... do you know ... that sometimes, when I am merriest ... outside ... it is as though I heard little children crying.”
 
He sat silent.
 
“I hear little children crying, Cordt. When I am dancing ... and sometimes when I am singing. And at the theatre ... when there are many lights and people and I am happy ... then it comes so often. Then I hear little children crying ... far, far away, but still I can hear them distinctly ... I can never help hearing them ... Cordt ... do you know what it is?”
 
[115]“Yes, I know, Adelheid.”
 
Adelheid looked at him and turned her eyes to the fireplace again:
 
“Sometimes it happens differently,” she said. “When I hear a child crying ... when it is really a child crying ... a strange child, which has nothing to do with me, which I know nothing at all about ... I needn’t even see it, Cordt ... but then I have to cry myself.”
 
She was silent for a little. Then she turned her face to him and asked:
 
“Do you know what that is, Cordt?” And he looked at her calmly and said again:
 
“Yes, I know, Adelheid.”
 
“I do not know,” she said and shook her head softly. “I love our little boy and love to have him with me. Don’t I, Cordt?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“But he is much happier with old[116] Marie. He prefers to be with her. He puts out his little hands to me when I come in. But, when I have had him in my arms for a while, he wants to go back to Marie. He is so small still.”
 
“Yes.”
 
“Sometimes he will not kiss me on any account. He always kisses old Marie.”
 
“When she comes to die, we will put a tombstone on her grave,” he said. “And on the stone we will write, ‘Here lies one whom the children in the house kissed.’”
 
Fru Adelheid folded her hands behind her neck and looked up at the ceiling:
 
“At one time, you used to tell me about your mother ... that is long, long ago, Cordt. You talked of her so often, in those days ... why do you never do so now?”
 
“I think only of you.”
 
She moved nearer to him and laid her head on his knee:
 
[117]“May I lie like this, Cordt?”
 
He stroked her hair and left his hand lying on her shoulder.
 
“That’s nice,” she said.
 
Cordt looked at her hair and stroked it again. She closed her eyes and nestled up against him:
 
“It is so quiet here,” she said. “Now I will go to sleep.”
 
But then she grew restless again. She half raised herself and lay on her knees, with her hands folded in her lap. Her hair had become undone and slipped down over her shoulders. Her eyes stared into the fire:
 
“You used to tell me that your mother undressed you every night when you were a little boy,” she said. “And every morning she dressed you ... always.”
 
“So she did.”
 
“You said that it so often made her late when she was going to the theatre[118] ... or else she would get up from the table when there were guests. And your father used to be so angry with her.”
 
He nodded.
 
“I think your father was right,” she said. “I think it was odd of your mother ... not quite ... not quite natural.”
 
Cordt pushed the hair from his forehead, but said nothing.
 
“I could see quite well that you would have me do the same. But I couldn’t do it. I can’t do it as well as old Marie does and I can’t see that that is necessary in order to be a good mother.... Then you also told me that, one evening, when your mother had to go out, you cried without stopping until she came home again.”
 
“Yes.”
 
“But, if your mother had been like me and if old Marie had undressed you every[119] night, then it would have been she whom you would have cried for.”
 
“So it would,” he replied. “But it was good for me and good for herself that it was mother.”
 
“I don’t understand that,” she said.
 
But then she raised her head and looked at him with great, proud eyes:
 
“Yes ... I understand,” she said. “I understand that it is good for a man and gives him confidence to see his wife chained to her baby’s cradle.”
 
“That is so, Adelheid.”
 
He looked at her quietly and sadly and her defiance was broken then and there:
 
“How strangely you say that,” she said. “Cordt....”
 
Then she laid her head on his knee again and they were silent for a time. Then she said:
 
“I remember the evening when I was going to my first grown-up ball. A lady[120] came to dress my hair. I was so solemn and the lady so talkative. She told me that I was pretty and that I was sure to be married soon; therefore I must lose no time and dance as much as I could; for, once a girl was married, she had to give up dancing. I asked her what she meant and said that I knew many married women who danced. Then she told me that that was true enough and that there were many fine ladies who did, but then they danced their children dead and therefore it was a great sin.”
 
He moved in his chair. She raised her head and laid it on his knee again:
 
“Do you believe that we can dance our children dead, Cordt?”
 
He did not reply, but stroked her cheek. But she pushed his hand away and turned her face and looked at him:
 
“Do you believe it, Cordt?”
 
He nodded.
 
[121]Then Fru Adelheid rose awkwardly from the floor and stood before him. Slowly, she raised her hands and pressed them against her temples.
 
Cordt sprang up and took her hands firmly in his own and drew her to him. But she tore herself away and her eyes stared vacantly into his and did not see him.
 
“Adelheid!”
 
“Those are your children and mine, Cordt ... the little children who cry when I am merry ... the children who died because their mother danced....”
 
“Adelheid!”
 
His voice was very soft and his eyes very gentle. She stared into them and saw a gleam in their depths. She understood that he was rejoicing within himself, because he thought that he had her as he wanted her.
 
He put out his hands to her and his[122] eyes and his silent, quivering mouth spoke a thousand loving words to her. She stood stiff and cold and looked at him stiffly and coldly.
 
And, when his hands touched her, she drew from him and pushed her chair far back, as if she could not find room enough:
 
“You do not understand me,” she said.
 
She crossed the room to the balcony-door and stood there. Then she came back to the fireplace, where he had sat down, and looked at him as though he were a stranger:
 
“Those little children who cry,” she said, “what do they cry for?”
 
He raised his hands and let them fall on the arms of his chair.
 
“Why do they cry?” she repeated. “Because they have not been brought into a world which is closed to them[123] at the very moment when they see its beauty?... Because they are not born to die?”
 
She went away again and came back and sat in her chair with a strained expression on her face, as though she had to explain something to one who was slow of comprehension:
 
“It’s no use,” she said.
 
Her voice was harsh. She swung her body to and fro and her thoughts hunted for words in which she could say what she wanted in such a way that it would be settled once and for all and could not be misunderstood.
 
Then her looks fell on Cordt, as he sat there by her side, shattered and tired, with closed eyes and nerveless hands. She saw the pain she was giving him. She wished to undo and repair it and the tears broke out in her:
 
“Cordt!”
 
[124]She took his hand and it lay lifeless in hers.
 
“Can’t you help me?”
 
“No, Adelheid.”
 
Then her mood changed about. She pushed herself back in her chair and crossed her arms over her breast:
 
“Then I must help myself,” she said. “How could you, either, an old ... yes, an old man like you?”
 
He did not answer, did not stir, did not look at her.
 
“An old man like you,” she repeated, “who longs for peace and quiet and nothing else. Then you give out that that is the best happiness which is the easiest and the cheapest and the best adapted to domestic use.”
 
Cordt had raised himself upright in his chair. His hands lay clenched about his knee, his eyes blazed.
 
“Then you put the woman you love[125] in your mother’s chair ... your grandmother’s and your great-grandmother’s chair....”
 
He flew up and stood before her with his hands on his hips and his lips pressed close together:
 
“Hold your tongue!”
 
Fru Adelheid started and looked at him with frightened eyes:
 
“You have no right to speak to me ............