Fritz Nettenmair heard only his brother’s presumptuous demand that he should take him to her!  That he should take him to her now!  Did Apollonius already know of her state and want to take advantage of it?  The question was superfluous; if they saw each other now they could not fail to understand each other.  And then it would be there, the thing that for weeks he had not allowed himself an hour’s rest in trying to prevent.  Then it would come to pass, the thing of which he knew that it must come and the coming of which he had yet made desperate efforts to hinder.  They must not see each other face to face now; they must not see each other now until he had built a new dividing wall between them.  Of what?  He had no leisure to think of that now.  He must have some pretext on which to prevent the meeting, must have time to find an excuse.  And merely to gain time he said laughingly: 

“Of course!  Ask her freely and cheerfully.  Whoever asks is told.  But how do you come to think of that just now?  Just now?” A thought that flashed overwhelmingly into his mind involuntarily expressed itself in this question.  Apollonius was already at the door.  He turned back to his brother, and answered with a gladness that seemed fiendish to the latter because he did not look into the other’s honest face.  If he had, Apollonius would have caught something of the devilish fear that disfigured his brother’s countenance.  And still, perhaps he would not.  He might have thought his brother ill, so entirely was he without the slightest suspicion of anything in his proposal that could inspire his brother with fear.  In fact he thought that what pleased him must please his brother also.

“Before,” replied Apollonius, “I was obliged to fear that I should make her still more angry.  And that would have been even more disagreeable for you than for me.”

His brother laughed and nodded in his jovial way with his head and shoulders merely for the sake of doing something.  And his:  “And now?” sounded as if it were half stifled with laughter, not with anything else.

“Your wife has been different for some time,” went on Apollonius confidingly.

“She is”—­answered Fritz Nettenmair’s start against his will and wanted to say what he considered her to be.  It was an evil word.  But would he himself who had made her that tell him so?  No, it has not yet come to pass, what he fears.  And even if it is bound to come; he can still delay it.  He forces himself not to give utterance to his excitement.  He would like to ask:  “And how do you know that she—­is different?” But he knows that his voice would tremble and betray him.  He must know who has told his brother.  Has he already spoken to her?  Has he read it in her eyes at a distance?  Or is there a third person involved—­an enemy whom he already hates before he knows whether he exists?