“And also to tell you that he forbade him?” laughed her husband.  And there was something of contempt in his laugh.  Such things might indeed be believed of the dreamer; but now he would not believe it of him.  “Of course!” he laughed still more wildly.  “Even a stupider fellow than that dreamer knows that no woman will do it for nothing.  The worst of them thinks herself worth something.  One with such hair and such eyes and such a body!” He seized her by the hair and gazed into her eyes with a glance before which purity must blush; only depravity could meet it and laugh.  He took her blush for a confession and laughed still more wildly.  “You want to say that I am worse than he.  Ha, Ha!  You’re right; I married such a woman.  He wouldn’t have done that.  He isn’t bad enough for that!”

Old Valentine must have failed to keep his word, or else Apollonius passed the door by chance when his brother believed him far away.  He heard his brother’s savage outbreak of anger, he heard the clear tone of the wife’s voice, still clear and melodious in spite of her excitement.  He heard them both without understanding what they were saying.  He was shocked.  He had not imagined that the breach between them had gone so far.  And he was the cause of this breach.  He must do what he could to improve matters.

His brother stood in his threatening attitude as if turned to stone when he caught sight of Apollonius entering.  He had the feeling of a man suddenly surprised while doing a wrong.  If Apollonius had turned on him as he deserved he would have groveled before him.  But Apollonius wanted to reconcile them, and said so calmly and from his heart.  He might indeed have known, for he had experienced it often enough, that his gentleness only gave his brother the courage to be sneeringly obstinate.  It was the same this time.  Fritz sneered at him, laughing savagely, and said that he was making an excuse where he was master.  Was that the reason he had made himself master of the house?  He knew that in Apollonius’ place he would have behaved quite differently.  He would have let the woman feel it whom he knew to be in his power.  He was an honest fellow, and did not need to pretend to be so sweet.  It occurred to him, moreover, how often he had sneaked about the door in vain, hoping to surprise Apollonius in the room.  Now he was in the room.  He had come in because he had not expected to find him.  It was Apollonius who must be startled, Apollonius was the person caught, not he.  The reconciliation was merely the first excuse on which Apollonius had seized.  That was why he was so meek.  That was why his wife was frightened—­she had been trying to make him believe that Apollonius never came into the room.  That was why she looked up at him so pleadingly.  The contemptuous gaze with which she had just measured him had suddenly been torn from her consciously guilty face with the mask of pretended innocence.  Now he knew with certainty:  there was no longer anything to prevent; nothing remained to him but retribution.  Now he could show his brother that he knew him, had always known him.