Ingram hated tea-time at the parsonage. Every day it was more of an effort to meet Herr Dremmel's ceremoniousness appropriately, and his scientific thirst for facts about art bored Ingram intolerably. He detested the large soft creases of his clothes and the way they buttoned and bulged between the buttonings. He disliked him for having sleeves and trousers that were too long. He shuddered at the thought of the six children. He did not want to hear about super-phosphates, and resented having regularly every afternoon to pretend he did; and he did want, and this became a growing wish and a growing awkwardness, to make love to Herr Dremmel's wife. Herr Dremmel's large unconsciousness of such a possibility annoyed him, particularly his obliviousness to the attractiveness of Ingeborg. He would certainly deserve, thought Ingram, anything he got. It was scandalous not to take more care of a little thing like that. Every day at tea-time he was enraged by this want of care in Herr Dremmel, and every day before and after tea he was engrossed, if abortive efforts to philander can be called so, in not taking care of her himself. "You see," said Ingeborg when he commented on the immense personal absences and withdrawals of Herr Dremmel, "Robert is very _great_. He's wonderful! The things he does with just grains! And of course if one is going to achieve anything one has to give up every minute to it. Why, even when he loved me he usedn't to--" "Even when he loved you?" interrupted Ingram. "What, doesn't he now?" "Oh, yes, yes," she said quickly, flushing. "I meant--of course he does. And besides, one always loves one's wife." "No, one doesn't." "Yes, one does." They left it at that. At the end of his second week in Kökensee Ingram found himself increasing the number of his adjectives and images and comparisons, growing almost eagerly poetical, for the force of proximity and want of any one else to talk to or to think about was beginning to work, and it was becoming the one thing that seemed to him to matter to get self-consciousness into her frank eyes, something besides or instead of that glow of admiring friendliness. He was now very much attracted, and almost equally exasperated. She was, after all, a woman; and it was absurd, it was incredible, that he, Ingram, with all these opportunities should not be able to shake her out of her first position of just wonder at him as an artist and a celebrity.