She asked to be shown his experimental fields, and he took her with him very amiably one hot morning, promising to explain them to her; but instantly on reaching them he became absorbed, and after she had spent an hour sitting on a stone at the edge of a strip of lupins beneath a haggard little fir tree which gave the solitary bit of shade in that burning desert watching him going up and down the different strips examining apparently every single plant with Johann, she began to think she had better go home and look after the dinner, and waving a good-bye to him, which he did not see, she went. A day or two later she asked whether it would not be good and pleasant that his mother should come over to tea with them soon. He replied amiably that it would be neither good nor pleasant. She asked whether it might not be a duty of theirs to invite her. He replied, after consideration, "Perhaps." She asked whether he did not love his mother. He replied unhesitatingly, "No." She then went and sat on his knee and caught hold of his ears and pulled his head up so that he should look at her. "But Robert--" she said. "Well, little sheep?" Since their marriage he had instinctively left off calling her a lamb. The universe, which for a time she had managed to reduce into just a setting for one little female thing, had arranged itself into its proper lines again; the lamb had become a sheep--a little one, but yet no longer and never again a lamb. He was glad he had been able to be so thoroughly in love. He was glad he had so promptly applied the remedy of marriage. His affection for his wife was quite satisfactory: it was calm, it was deep, it interfered with nothing. She held the honourable position he had always, even at his most enamoured moments, known she would ultimately fill, the position next best in his life after the fertilizers. His house, so long murky with widows, was now a bright place because of her. Approaching poetry, he likened her to a little flitting busy bird in spring. Always he was pleased when she came and perched on his knee. "Well, little sheep?" he said, smiling at her as she looked very close into his eyes. Her face, seen so near, was charming in its delicate detail, in its young perfection of texture and colouring. Scrutinizing her eyes he was glad to notice once again how intelligent they were. Presently there would be sturdy boys tumbling about the garden with eyes like that, grey and honest and intelligent. His boys. Carrying on, far more efficiently, the work he had begun. "Well, little sheep?" he said, suddenly moved. "_Oughtn't_ one to love one's mother?" she asked. "Perhaps. But one does not. Do you?" "Oh, poor mother--" said Ingeborg quickly.