Herr Dremmel raised his head but not his eyes from his book, expressing thereby both a civilised attentiveness to anything she might wish to say and a continued interest in the sentence he was at. When he had finished it he looked at her over his spectacles, and inquired if she had spoken. "Why should I not go and come unquestioned?" she asked, flushed with indignation that his prejudices should be forcing her to the low cunning that substituted boots for Italy. "_You_ do." He examined her impartially. "What do I do, Ingeborg?" he asked with patience. "Go away when you want to and come back when you choose. You've been quite far. You went once to a place the other side of Berlin. Oh, I know it's business you go on, but I don't think that makes it any better--on the contrary, it isn't half as good a reason as going because it's beautiful to go, and fine and splendid. And it isn't as though I even had to ask you to give me money for it. I simply roll in that hundred a year you allow me. I haven't spent a quarter of it for years. My cupboard upstairs is stuffed with notes." He looked at her, but finding it impossible to discover any meaning in her remarks began to read again. "Robert--" With patience he again removed his eyes from his book and looked at her. Beneath the table she was pressing her hands together, twisting them about in her lap. "Well, Ingeborg?" he said. "Don't you think it's unworthy, the way women have to ask permission to do things?" "No," said Herr Dremmel; but he was thinking of the _Minusvarianten_, and it was mere chance that he did not say Yes. "When husbands go away they don't ask their wives' permission, and it never would occur to the wives that they ought to. So why should the wives have to ask the husbands'?" Herr Dremmel gazed at her a moment, and then made a stately, excluding, but entirely kindly movement with his right hand. "Ingeborg," he said, "I am not interested." And he began to read again. She poured herself out some more tea, drank it hastily and hot, and said with a great effort, "It's nonsense about permissions. I--I'm going to Berlin." Then she waited with her heart in her mouth and both hands clutching the edge of the table. But nothing happened. He read on. "Robert--" she said. Once more he endeavoured to place his attention at her disposal, dragging it away reluctantly from his book. "Yes, Ingeborg?" he said. "Robert--I'm going to Berlin." "Are you, Ingeborg?" he inquired with perfect mildness. "Why?" "I've got to get things. Shop." "And why Berlin, Ingeborg? Is not Meuk nearer?" "Boots," she said. "There aren't any in Meuk. I never _saw_ any in Meuk." "And in Königsberg? That also is nearer than Berlin." "You must have heard," she said, laying hold, because she was afraid, of the first words that came into her head, "of Berlin wool. Well, the same thing exactly applies to boots." He stared at her as one who feels about for some point of contact with an alien intelligence.