When Herr Dremmel came out of his laboratory to ask why his lamp had not been brought, and found no light anywhere and no Ilse when he shouted, he was vexed; but when he had fetched a lamp himself and put it on the table where it shone on to Ingeborg's swollen and blinking eyes, he was still more vexed. "This is foolish," he said, staring down at her a moment. "You will only harm my child." She did not cry again. The spring had dried up the roads, but she did not for all that take walks that obliged her to pass through the village; instead, she spent hours in the budding garden up and down on one of the two available paths, the one at the end on the edge of the rye-fields which were now the vividest green, or the one on the east side of the house beneath Robert's laboratory windows where the lilacs grew. His table was at right angles to the end window, and she often stood on the path watching him, his head bent over his work in an absorption that went on hour after hour. He kept the windows shut because the spring disturbed him. It had a way of coming in irrepressibly and wantoning among his papers, or throwing a handful of lilac blossoms into his rye samples, or sending an officious bee to lumber round him. Ingeborg walked up and down, up and down on this path every day, taking the exercise Baroness Glambeck had recommended, and for three weeks just this path was the most beautiful thing in the world, for it was planted on either side with ancient lilac bushes and they were a revelation to her when they came out after the spare and frugal lilacs in the gardens at home. Above their swaying scented loveliness of light and colour and shape she could see Robert's tow-coloured head inside the window bending over his table every time she came to the end of her tramp and turned round again. It was the best part of the whole nine months, these three weeks of lilacs and fine weather on that scented path, with Robert busy and content where she could see him. She loved being able to see him; it was a companionable thing. By June everything was ready. The nursery was furnished, the cradle trimmed, a pale blue perambulator blocked the passage, neat stacks of little clothes filled the cupboards, and Frau Dosch, a hoary person of unseemly conversation, interviewed and told to be on the alert. The idea of arranging for a doctor to be on the alert too would not of itself have entered Ingeborg's head, and nobody put it there. Such a being was indeed mentioned once by Baroness Glambeck, whose interest, increasing with the months, brought her over several times, but only vaguely as some one who had to be sent for when the midwife judged the patient to have reached the stage. Then, apparently, the law obliged the midwife to send for a doctor.