"Hanka has been a good mother to the children lately. I have been very happy because of that; it has brought us closer together, as it were. She is busy fitting the children out for the country. It is wonderful the things she gets together; I have never seen anything like it--blue and white and red dresses! They are lying home; I look at them whenever I am home. Perhaps I shouldn't place too much faith in it. She does not consider herself married yet, she continues to call herself Lange. That may be only a whim. She calls herself Tidemand, too; she does not forget that. You yourself heard last night in Tivoli how she asked me for a hundred. I am glad she does that; I don't mind, and shouldn't have mentioned it if you hadn't heard it yourself. But it happened to be the third hundred crowns she had got from me in two days. Don't misunderstand me! But why does she ask me for money before people? Isn't that as if she wanted to give out the impression that that is the only way to take me, otherwise she wouldn't get any? She uses a good deal of money; I hardly think she uses it for herself; I am sure she doesn't, for Hanka was never extravagant. She must be giving it away; it is her affair if she helps somebody. She gets quite a lot of money from me in a week's time; sometimes she gets it when she goes out, and she has nothing left when she returns, although she has bought nothing. Well, that does not matter. As long as I have anything it belongs to her as well as to me; that is only right and natural. I asked her jokingly once if she wanted to ruin me-- make a beggar out of me. It was only a joke, and I laughed heartily myself as I said it. But I shouldn't have said it; she offered to leave the house whenever I wanted her to--in short, divorce. She has told me that often enough, but this time simply because of a joke. I said that I was sorry, and I asked her pardon; I had never for a moment thought of such a thing as that she might ruin me. 'Dear Andreas,' she asked me, 'can we never get free from each other?' I do not know what I answered; I guess there was not much sense to it, for she asked immediately for my key, as she had lost her own. I gave it to her, and then she smiled. 'Smile again,' I said, and she did it for my sake, and said smilingly that I was a big baby. Yesterday morning I didn't see her before I got home from the office. She was still working with the children's summer outfit and showed me everything. She took out her handkerchief, and as she pulled it out from her dress a tie fell out, a gentleman's red tie. I made out that I did not see it; but I knew very well that the tie did not belong to me. I knew it only too well. That is--understand me correctly--I did not see it well enough to be sure whom it might belong to. It might even have been one of my own ties, some old rag I have ceased to use. It is a peculiarity of mine never to remember my own ties; I notice them so little, I imagine--So things are coming around, as I said.