the old slanders.  He knew that petty absurdities are better fitted to destroy a growing interest than are gross faults.  He imitated Apollonius going back along a way along which he had already passed with a light, for fear that he might have let a spark fall; he showed how his brother could not rest at night for thinking that perhaps a workman had not deserved the harsh word that he had spoken to him in the heat of the moment, how he sprang up out of bed to straighten the position of a ruler that he had left lying crooked on the table.  At the same time Fritz kept on blowing imaginary fluff from his sleeves.  He saw indeed that his efforts were having an opposite effect to what he wished.  Irritated by this he went on to stronger measures.  He pitied poor Anne whom Apollonius had made fall in love with him by hypocrisy, and told how coarsely he made fun of her in public.

A dark red had come into his young wife’s cheeks.  Frank, simple natures have a deep hatred of all duplicity, perhaps because they feel instinctively how defenseless they stand before such an enemy.  She was trembling with emotion as she rose and said:  “You might do that; he could not.”

Fritz Nettenmair was startled.  In the sight of the figure that stood before him full of contempt there was something that disarmed him.  It was the power of truth, the loftiness of innocence confronting the sinner.  He pulled himself together with an effort.  “Did he tell you so?  Have you got so far already?” he said, forcing the words out between his teeth.  Christiane wanted to go into the house; he stopped her.  She wanted to tear herself away.

“You have lied about everything,” she said.  “You have lied to him.  You have lied to me.  I heard what you said to him just now in the shed.”

Fritz Nettenmair drew a breath of relief.  So she did not know everything.  “Was I not obliged to?” he said, his eye scarcely able to stand the purity of her gaze.  “Was I not obliged to in order to prevent your disgrace?  Do you want the fluff-picker to despise you?” Now her eyes made him drop his.  “Do you know what you are?  Ask him what a woman is who forgets her honor and her duty.  Of whom do you think as you should think only of your husband?  When you creep about like a wench in love wherever you think you will see him?  And you think that people are blind.  Ask him what he calls that kind of a woman?  Oh, people have fine names for a woman of that sort.”

He saw how she started, shocked.  Her arm quivered in his hand.  He saw she was beginning to understand him, was beginning to understand herself.  He had feared her obstinacy—­and behold, she was breaking down!  The angry red faded in her cheek and a blush of shame flushed wildly over its pallor.  He saw her eyes seek the ground as if she felt the gaze of all men fixed upon her, as if the shed, the fence, the trees all had eyes and they were all staring into hers.  He saw how in the suddenness of her perception she called herself one of the women for whom people have such fine names.