The pain poured its rain over her burning cheeks that bled with shame and her tears were like oil; the fire grew when a voice sounded from the shed and his tread was heard.  She tried to tear herself violently away and looked up with a half wild, half imploring glance that, dying, sank again to the ground before the thousand eyes that were fixed upon her.  He saw that the eye of the man who was coming through the shed was the most terrible of all to her.  He was again in possession of all his courage.

“Tell him,”—­he forced the words out softly—­“what you want of him.  If he is as you think he is he must despise you.”

Fritz Nettenmair held the struggling woman fast with the strength of the victor until he had beckoned to Apollonius, who stepped questioningly out of the shed, to come over to him.  He let her go and she fled into the house.  Apollonius, shocked, stopped halfway up to him.

“You see how she is,” Fritz said to him.  “I told her you wanted to ask her.  If you like we will go after her, and she must confess to us.  I’ll see whether my wife can safely insult my brother, who is so good.”

Apollonius had to restrain him.  Fritz would not consent at first.  Finally he said:  “Well, now you see, at least, that it is not my fault.  Oh, I am so sorry!”

There was an involuntary dismay in the last words which Apollonius connected with the failure at a reconciliation.  Fritz Nettenmair repeated them softly, and this time they sounded like a mockery of Apollonius, like mocking regret at the failure of a sly trick.

Christiane had rushed into the living-room and bolted the door behind her.  She was not thinking of Fritz; but Apollonius might come in.  She turned over and over the feverish thought of fleeing out into the world.  But wherever she thought of herself, on the steepest mountain, in the deepest valley, he met her and saw what it was that she wanted and he had to despise her.  Little Annie was in the room; she had not noticed the child.  All the mother’s life was engaged in her inward struggle; Annie could not tell from her mother’s look what was going on within her.  She drew her mother onto a chair, threw her arms round her in her usual fashion and looked up into her face.  Her gaze struck her mother as if it came from Apollonius’ eyes.  Little Annie said: 

“Do you know, Mother, Uncle ’Lonius”—­the mother jumped up and pushed the child away from her as if it had been he himself.  “Don’t tell me anything more about—­don’t tell me anything more about him!” she said with such angry fear that the little girl stopped speaking and began to cry.  Little Annie did not see the fear, she saw only the anger in her mother’s action.  It was anger at herself.  The little girl lied when she told her uncle of her mother’s anger at him.  He did not need to be told.  Had he not seen her red cheek himself, when she fled from his and his brother’s question; the same red of angry dislike with which she had received him when he came home?  Oh, from then on life was curiously sultry in the house with the green shutters for days and weeks.