No, thought Ingeborg, turning quickly away all cold and trembling, better not think; better just sit in the sun and wonder what Robertlet would look like later on if he persisted in being exactly like Frau Dremmel and yet in due season had to go into trousers, and what would happen if the next one were like Frau Dremmel, too, and whether she would presently be teaching a row of little mothers-in-law its infant hymns. The thought of Frau Dremmel become plural, diminished into socks and pinafores, standing neatly at her knee being taught to lisp in numbers, seized her with laughter. She laughed and laughed; and only stopped when she discovered that what she was really doing was crying. "Perhaps it's talking I want more than thinking," she said to Herr Dremmel at last, returning from one of these barren expeditions in search of understanding. She said it a little timidly, for she was already less to him than she had been in that brief interval of health, and knew that with every month she would be less and less. It was odd how sure of him she was when she was not going to have a baby, of what an easy confidence in his love, and how he seemed to slip away from her when she was. Already, though she had only just begun, he was miles away from the loving mood in which he folded her in his arms and called her his little sheep. Herr Dremmel, who was supping, and was not in possession of the context, recommended thinking. He added after a pause that only a woman would have suggested a distinction. Ingeborg did not make the obvious reply, but said she thought if she might talk to somebody, to Robert, for instance, and with her hand in his, rather _tight_ in his while she talked, so that she might feel safe, feel not quite so loose and unheld together in an enormous, awful world-- Herr Dremmel looked at his watch and said perhaps he would have time to hold her hand next week. A few days later she said, equally without supplying him with the context, "It's blessing disguising itself, that's what it is." Herr Dremmel, who again was supping, said nothing, preferring to wait. "Blessing only pretending to be cruelty. Not really cruelty at all." Herr Dremmel still preferred to wait. "I thought at first it was cruelty," she said, "but now I think perhaps--perhaps it's blessing." "What did you think was cruelty, Ingeborg?" asked Herr Dremmel, who disliked the repetition of such a word. "Having this next baby so quickly--without time to forget." Her eyes grew bright. "Cruelty, Ingeborg?" Herr Dremmel said one did not, when one was a pastor's wife, call Providence names. "That's what I'm saying," she said. "I thought at first it was cruel, but now I see it's really ever so much better not to waste time between one's children, and then be well for the rest of one's days. It--it will make the contrast afterwards, when one has done with pain, so splendid."