Fritz Nettenmair burst into a horrible laugh.  His brother had put him to shame in every way, and now still wanted to play the virtuous hero to him, the innocently offended, the chivalrous protector of the innocently offended woman.  “A good woman!  Such a good woman!  Oh yes indeed!  Is she not?  You say so—­and you are a good man.  Ha, ha!  Who should know better whether a woman is good or not than such a good man?  You have not robbed me of everything?  You have still to rob me of my reason so that I shall believe your fairy-tale.  She dislikes you?  She can’t bear you?  Oh, you don’t know yet how much she dislikes you.  I need only be away, then she will tell you.  Then it will be bad for you!  She will strangle you to make you believe her.  When I am present she won’t tell you.  A woman won’t tell a thing like that when her husband is there—­a good woman, as she is.  Why don’t you say that you can’t bear her either?  Oh, I have no longer any sense!  I’ll believe anything that you two tell me!”

Forgetting everything but his passion, Fritz Nettenmair was convinced that Christiane and Apollonius had invented the fairy-tale of her dislike.

Apollonius stood shocked.  He was obliged to say to himself what he did not want to believe.  His brother read in his face terror at the light that was breaking in on him, dismay and pain at the misconstruction put upon his conduct.  And everything that he saw was so genuine that even he was obliged to believe it.  He was silenced by the thoughts that pierced his brain like strokes of lightning.  So it might still have been prevented after all; what must come might still have been hindered!  And again it was he, himself—­But Apollonius—­he saw that in spite of his confusion—­still doubted and could not believe.  So he might still destroy the effects of his madness, might still perhaps prevent, still hinder what must come, even if it were only for today and tomorrow.  But how?  Should he make a wild joke out of the whole scene?  Such jokes were not unusual with him, and in his mind Apollonius once more became the dreamer of old who believed everything that was told him.  He broke into a laugh, a fearful caricature of the jovial laugh with which he had formerly been accustomed to reward his own sallies.  That was a confounded joke, that Apollonius could be made to believe that Fritz Nettenmair was jealous!  Jovial Fritz Nettenmair jealous!  Jovial Fritz Nettenmair!  And, better still, of him.  He had never heard a more confounded joke than that!  He read in his wife’s face how relieved she was at the turn he had given to the scene.  He dared to appeal to her to confirm the fact that it was a confounded joke.  Her “yes” made him still bolder.  Now he laughed at his wife who could be “confounded” enough to reproach him angrily with having made her dependent on the favor of the man she hated, and explained laughingly that it was such things that gave rise to little quarrels in married life.  He laughed at Apollonius for taking such a little dispute so seriously.  He asked to be shown the married people who didn’t have such disagreements now and then.  It was easy to see that Apollonius was still a bachelor!