Then he took up the account of his expenditures. He sat there, eagerly handling the papers, now frowning heavily when he could not at once balance some small sum, now stiffening his double chin in satisfied self-righteousness as he explained some new way of saving that had occurred to him.... Again and again, to the point of weariness, he reiterated solemnly: "You see, I'm an honest man." And always when he said that, a weary irony prompted her to reply: "Ah, what that honesty has cost me." ... But she held her peace. And again she wanted to cry out: "Let be! A woman like myself doesn't care for these two-penny decencies." But she saw how deep an inner necessity it was to him to stand before her in this conventional spotlessness. And so she didn't rob him of his childlike joy. At last he made an end and spread out the little blue books before her--there was one for each year. "Here," he said proudly, "you can go over it yourself. It's exact." "It had better be!" she cried with a jesting threat and put the little books under a flower-pot. A prankish mood came upon her now which she couldn't resist. "Now that this important business is at an end," she said, "there is still another matter about which I must have some certainty." "What is that?" he said, listening intensely. "Have you been faithful to me in all this time?" He became greatly confused. The scars on his left cheek glowed like thick, red cords. "Perhaps he's got a betrothed somewhere," she thought with a kind of woeful anger, "whom he's going to throw over now." But it wasn't that. Not at all. "Well," he said, "there's no help for it. I'll confess. And anyhow, _you've_ even been married in the meantime." "I would find it difficult to deny that," she said. And then everything came to light. During the early days in Berlin he had been very intimate with a waitress. Then, when he was an assistant in the surgical clinic, there had been a sister who even wanted to be married. "But I made short work of that proposition," he explained with quiet decision. And as for the Lithuanian servant girl whom he had in the house now, why, of course he would dismiss her next morning, so that the house could be thoroughly aired before she moved in. This was the moment in which a desire came upon her--half-ironic, half-compassionate--to throw her arms about him and say: "You silly boy!" But she did not yield and in the next moment the impulse was gone. Only an annoyed envy remained. He dared to confess everything to her--everything. What if she did the same? If he were to leave her in horrified silence, what would it matter? She would have freed her soul. Or perhaps he would flare up in grateful love? It was madness to expect it. No power of heaven or earth could burst open the doors or demolish the walls that towered between them for all eternity.