Cordt stood on the threshold and waited, but then closed the door and went to the fire.  
He was in dress-clothes and tired and pale and his eyes were bright with wine. When he had been sitting for a little while, it grew too warm for him and he drew his chair to the balcony-door. There he sat and let his hands play with the red flowers.
 
Fru Adelheid did not see him when she entered.
 
She moved slowly and stopped in the middle of the room, when she discovered that he was not by the fireplace. She was surprised at this, but soon forgot it, in her gayety and her lingering excitement at the evening’s entertainment, with her[96] mind full of bright and clever phrases and the lights gleaming in her great eyes.
 
She sat down to the spinet and laid her forehead against the keys. Something was singing inside her; her foot softly beat the carpet.
 
Then she sought among the music and sang:
 
Lenore, my heart is wrung.
Thine is so dauntless, thine is so young.
Tell me, Lenore, the truth confessing
(Which never were mine by guessing):
Whence do thy soul’s fresh fountains pour?
Where the mountains dip or the valleys soar?
Tell me, the truth confessing;
Open to me youth’s door.
Lenore, my heart is sad.
Thine is so constant, thine is so glad.
Teach me thine equable gait to borrow;
Teach me laughter and sorrow.
My heart is a desert, sterile and bare;
My heart is thine: do thou whisper there
Of a fount that shall flood to-morrow,
Of a sun that shall gild God’s air.
[97]She put one hand on the music-sheet and played with the other and hummed the tune again.
 
Then Cordt clapped his hands in applause. She started and her hand fell heavily on the keyboard:
 
“How you frightened me, Cordt!”
 
He came and stood beside the spinet. Fru Adelheid looked at his face and sighed. Then she stood up, put the music away and went and sat in a chair by the fireplace:
 
“Won’t you come here, Cordt?”
 
Cordt walked to and fro again and up and down.
 
“Sit down here for a little,” she said.
 
“Why should I?” he asked. “You are not here, you know.”
 
She looked up and met his calm eyes.
 
“You are still down below, among the crowd of our guests. Don’t you know that, Adelheid? They are all empty carriages[98] that drove out at the gate. For, as each one came to shake hands and say good-bye, you entreated him to stay a little longer.”
 
Fru Adelheid sighed and crossed her hands in her lap. He stood up by the fireplace so that he could see her face.
 
“I was sitting over there among the flowers, when you came in, and I saw it all. You entered with a gleam and a rustle, accompanied by the whole throng ... you were the fairest of them all. By your side went Martens, supple and handsome. A long way after came his wife ... the woman who wears those tired eyes and that painful smile. She did not even look to see to whom he was offering his homage.”
 
She puckered her forehead and looked at him angrily.
 
“Then he begged you to sing the song once more and they crowded round you[99] and added their entreaties to his. You crossed the floor ... with your slow, sure gait.... You always walk in the same way, Adelheid ... like one who is not to be stopped. Your white dress trailed behind you; there was silence in the room.”
 
Cordt ceased for a moment. Fru Adelheid laid her head back in the chair and closed her eyes.
 
“Then you sang ... his song ... the one you were singing a minute ago at the old spinet.... Yes, you heard me applauding, Adelheid. He stood beside you and looked at you ... deferentially, happily. And you looked at him to read in his eyes how charming you were.”
 
“How wicked you make it all seem!” she said.
 
Cordt bent over her:
 
“Look at me, Adelheid.”
 
She looked at him and was afraid.
 
[100]“How dare you come up here with your retinue?” he asked. “Up here ... to me ... in this room? Look at me, Adelheid. Is there not room enough in the house besides? Are there not a hundred houses in the town where you can play the game you love?”
 
Fru Adelheid stretched out her hands to him:
 
“Cordt!”
 
But his eyes were large and stern and she could not bear to look into them.
 
Then she rose and stood before him with bowed head:
 
“Shall I go, Cordt?” she asked, softly.
 
He did not answer, but crossed the room. And Fru Adelheid sat down on the edge of the big chair, as if she were not at home in the room.
 
“Yes ... Martens,” he said.
 
“You were not at all friendly to him this evening, Cordt.”
 
[101]She said this in order to say something and without thinking, but regretted it at the same moment and looked at him dejectedly. But he made a gesture with his hand and answered, calmly:
 
“Indeed I was. As friendly as he could wish and a great deal more so than I feel.”
 
He stood by the mantel and looked down before him. She took his hand and laid her cheek against it:
 
“Martens is nothing to me,” she said.
 
“No,” said Cordt. “Not really. It is not the man ... it is men. It has not gone so far as that. But it has gone farther.”
 
“I don’t understand you,” she said, sadly.
 
“It is not a man, a good man or a bad one, that is wooing your heart and has won or is trying to win it. Martens is not my rival. He does not love you and[102] he is not trying to make you believe that he is. He does not lie. That is not called for nowadays, except among the lower classes. With us, we rarely see so much as the shade of a scandal. Whence should we derive the strength that is needed for a rupture, a separation, a flight from society? It’s a soldier that tells his girl that she is his only love ... a journeyman smith that kills his faithless sweetheart ... a farm-girl that drowns herself when her lover jilts her for another.”
 
He drew away his hand and folded his arms across his chest.
 
“Martens is no Don Juan. It is not his passion that infatuates women, not his manly courage and strength that wins them. He carries his desires to the back-streets; he takes his meals with his wife. He cannot love. The women become his when he covets them, but he has never belonged to any............