She turned then, and looked at him. He was kneeling by the stove trying to rekindle the dying embers with some sticks he had found in the coal-scuttle. He had changed his clothes for his full uniform, and the helmet with the plume lay at his side on the floor, together with the sword and white kid gloves. A bitter, sarcastic smile relaxed Nora’s set lips. She wondered that it had never struck her before how prosaic, almost plebeian he was. The splendid clothes had, after all, only been the gilt covering to a piece of machinery working in blind accordance with thousands of others in its one great task—a dull, brute thing, for whom the finer emotions were a sealed book. She saw him in a new light as he knelt there, his shadow thrown up against the wall by the rekindling fire. She felt as though he were a total stranger against whom she felt an increasing antagonism. Presently he rose, dusting his hands on his handkerchief. "I think it will do now," he said. "Do you want the light? You can’t possibly see." "I would rather be as I am," she answered coldly. She covered her face with her hand and appeared to forget his presence. But in a rapid, inexplicable revulsion of feeling, the first fear and suspense returned, and though she did not see him she followed his every movement, her ears translating every sound with the precision of a second-sight. She heard him pick up sword and helmet, then the soft, familiar click of his spurs as he crossed the room to the farther door. Then the sound stopped, and she knew that he was looking at her. The silence seemed to last an eternity. It suffocated her; she felt that if it lasted another instant she must scream out, so frightful was the strain, and yet, when as though obeying an irresistible behest he came back upon his steps and put his hand upon her shoulder, she prayed for that silence to come back, anything rather than that he should speak to her. "_Gott segne dich und behüte dich, meine Frau!_" he said, and bent and kissed her hand. That was all. The next minute the loud clang of the outer door told her that he had gone. For a long time she sat as though paralysed, listening to the words as they echoed through her memory. He had spoken in German—as he never did save in moments of deep feeling—and there had been something in his voice which she had never heard before. She sprang to her feet. The earlier lassitude and indifference were over, she felt as though every nerve in her body had been drawn taut by some nameless, indefinable fear. "Wolff!" she cried. "Wolff!" She knew that he was out of hearing. She knew that if he stood before her in that moment she would turn from him with the same coldness, the same anger. Yet she called for him despairingly, and when she put her hand to her face she found that it was wet with tears. "Wolff!" she repeated. "Wolff!"