“‘You know all’!” he repeated. He dropped her hand and pushed back his chair. “Goodness gracious, how that sounds! ‘All’! What-all lies in that ‘all’? ‘My love and grief I gave thee,’ eh? No, listen!” She was silent. She swept him with an astonished and deeply offended glance. “Yes, I expected that look,” he said, “for without that look you would not be here. But, dear Tony, let me take the thing as much too lightly as you take it too seriously. You will see we shall complement each other very nicely--” “Too seriously, Thomas? _I_ take it too seriously?” “Yes.--For heaven’s sake, don’t let’s make a tragedy of it! Let us take it in a lower key, not with ‘all is at an end’ and ‘your unhappy Antonie.’ Don’t misunderstand me, Tony. You well know that no one can be gladder than I that you have come. I have long wished you would come to us on a visit by yourself, without your husband, so that we could be _en famille_ together once more. But to come now, like this--my dear child, I beg your pardon, but it was--foolish. Yes--let me finish! Permaneder has certainly behaved very badly, as I will give him to understand pretty clearly--don’t be afraid of that--” “As to how he has behaved himself, Thomas,” she interrupted him, raising herself up to lay a hand upon her breast, “as far as that goes, I have already given him to understand that--and not only ‘given him to understand,’ I can tell you! I am convinced that further discussion with that man is entirely out of place.” And she let herself fall back again and looked sternly and fixedly at the ceiling. He bowed, as if under the weight of her words, and kept on looking down at his knee and smiling. “Well, then, I won’t send him a stiff letter. It is just as you say. In the end it is after all your affair, and it is quite enough if you put him in his place--it is your duty as his wife. After all, there are some extenuating circumstances. There was a birthday celebration, and he came home a little bit exalted, so to speak, and was guilty of a false step, an unseemly blunder--” “Thomas,” said she, “I do not understand you. I do not understand your tone. You--a man with your principles! But you did not see him. You did not see how drunk he looked--”