With bent neck, and his breathing thick and laboured, he leant against the wall muttering inarticulate sounds. He could not grasp it. That he should be a dupe, an object of contempt ... the noblest, the most refined of men! It was more than his thick honest head could take in. Then fury flamed up in him. "I wish I had her here between my fingers," he bellowed. "I would wring her neck! I would wring her neck!" With his hands grappling the air, his nostrils dilating, and his eyes red, he raged about the room. It was well for pretty Felicitas that at that moment she was safely hidden from his sight. Johanna watched him with a sour smile. "It would serve her right," said she. "But what can you do? You are powerless before her." "I? What do you take me for? Am I a cur? A slave of women? Her charm is for me completely broken, years ago. To-day I should confront her only as a judge." Again she shrugged her shoulders, but this time compassionately. "You poor boy! She would only have to ask, 'Who has made me what I am?' and your occupation of the judgment-seat would come to an end." He sank into a chair, the tears falling fast over his sunburnt cheeks, in which excitement had dug deep furrows. He sat motionless, crushed, and annihilated. She drew nearer to him and wiped his forehead, from which the perspiration poured. "Poor, poor boy!" she said; and then, close to his ear, "I think I understand what can be done." A long silence ensued. He glowered at the ground, the corners of his mouth working. Then a desperate resolve fought its way slowly upwards within him. At last he murmured-- "I see nothing for it but to open his eyes." "Good heavens!" she cried. "Do you think he would believe you? He would say that she had already told him herself." He recalled the tone of gentle consideration in which his friend had spoken of his wife's bizarre moods. It would not be very difficult for a pure mind like Ulrich's to put the worst in a harmless light. And besides, how was he to summon up the courage to tell his friend what all the country-side was gossiping about? He, who himself in the past had afforded the gravest material for such gossip? His sister, taking hold of his hands, went on, "No, Leo, that won't do. There is only one course to pursue. We two must keep watch on her. Only thus can we, you as well as I, make amends for the wrong we have done him. For you are at present the only person of whom she is afraid, the only one who has any power over her. And you must use this power to bring her back into the right path. You understand what I mean?"