She wondered whether the amount of cake she had eaten had appeared excessive. She had had two pieces. Perhaps there was a rigid local custom prescribing only one. She felt again that she was in a net of customs, with nobody to explain. The Baroness seemed quite disappointed when she assured her she did not feel sick at all. Ought guests to feel sick? Was it a subtle way of drawing attention to the irresistibleness of the host's food? It then occurred to her that it might very possibly be the custom in these country places to put callers to bed for an hour in the middle of their call, and that her omission to put her mother-in-law there was one of the causes of her tears. Next to going home as quickly as one did in England she felt going to bed was altogether the best thing. This thought, that it must be the custom, made her instantly pliable. With every gesture of politeness she hastened to clamber up on to the billows of feathers and white quilt. There was a smell of naphthalin as she sank downwards, a smell of careful warfare carried on incessantly with moth. The Baroness came away from letting in floods of air, and looked at her. "I am sure," she said, "you do feel sick." "I think I do--a little," said Ingeborg, anxious to give every satisfaction. It was evidently the right thing to say, for her hostess's face lit up. She went out of the room quickly and came back with some Eau de Cologne and a fan. Ingeborg watched her with bright alert eyes over the edge of a billow of feathers while she fetched a little table and brought it to the bed and arranged these things on it. How odd it was, she thought, greatly interested. Was the Baron simultaneously putting Robert to bed in some other room? She felt she had grown suddenly popular, that she was doing all the right things at last. Contrasted with its loftiness during the first part of the call the Baroness's manner was quite human and warm. She put the table close to her side, and told her the best thing she could do, quite the best thing, would be to try and sleep a little; if she wanted anything she was to ring, and the maid Tina would appear. "Ah, yes," she said in conclusion, standing for a moment looking down at her and heaving a great sigh that seemed to Ingeborg somehow to be pleasurable, "ah, yes. When one has said A, dear Frau Pastor, one must say B. Ah, yes." And she went out again on tip-toe, softly closing the door and leaving Ingeborg in a state of extreme and active interest and interrogation. "When one has said A one must say B...." Why must one? And what was B? What, indeed, if you came to that, was A? She listened a moment, raised on her elbow, her bright head more ruffled than ever after its descent into the billows, then she slid down on to the slippery floor and ran across in her stockings to one of the big open windows.