"Naturally if you have to go you must," he said. "Yes. For ten days." "Ten, Ingeborg? On account of boots?" She nodded defiantly, her hands beneath the table twisted into knots. He adjusted his mind to the conception. "Ten days for boots?" "Ten, ten," she said recklessly, prepared to brave any amount of opposition. "I want to see a few things while I'm about it--the galleries, for instance. It isn't going to be _all_ boots. I haven't stirred from here since our marriage, except to go to Zoppot--it's time I went--it's really _ridiculously_ time I went--" "But," said Herr Dremmel, with the complete reasonableness of one who is indifferent and has no desire whatever to argue, "but naturally. Of course, Ingeborg." "Then--you don't mind?" "But why should I mind?" "You--you're not even surprised?" "But why should I be surprised?" And once again he reflected on her apparently permanent obtuseness to values. She gazed at him with the astonishment of a child who has screwed itself up for a beating and finds itself instead being blessed. She felt relief, but a pained relief; an aggrieved, almost angry relief; such as he feels who putting his entire strength into the effort to lift a vessel he fears is too heavy for him finds it light and empty. Her soul, as it were, tumbled over backwards and sprawled. "How funny!" she murmured. "How very funny! And here I've been afraid to tell you." But once more he had ceased to listen. His eye had been caught by a statement on the page in front of him that interested him acutely, and he read with avidity to the end of the chapter. Then he got up with the book in his hand and went to the door, thinking over what he had read. She sat looking after him. "I expect--I think--I suppose I shall start to-morrow," she said as he opened the door. "Start?" he repeated absently. "Why should you start?" "Oh, Robert--I can't get there if I don't start." "Get where, Ingeborg?" he asked, his eyes on hers but his thoughts in unimaginable distances. "Oh, Robert--but to Berlin, of course." "Berlin. Yes. Very well. Berlin." And, deeply turning over the new and pregnant possibilities suggested to him by what he had just been reading, he went out. CHAPTER XXXII