Letitia shrugged her shoulders. “I hardly know,” she answered, with some embarrassment. “Sometimes I have money and sometimes I haven’t any. Poor auntie sold a few old Dutch pictures that she had. One can’t spend one’s life reckoning like a shopkeeper. Why do you talk of such horrid things?” There was such sincere pain and reproachfulness in her voice that Crammon felt like a sinner. He looked aside. Held by her charm, he lost the courage to burden her farther with coarse realities. And now, too, the countess appeared in the room. She had put on gloves of gleaming white, and her face glowed like freshly scrubbed porcelain. In her arms she carried Puck, the little Pekingese, who had grown old and slept much. “My dears, supper is served,” she cried, with the slightly stagy cheeriness of her youth. XVIII Karen believed that, in his own mind, Christian expected her to pay some attention to her child. She had secretly written to her mother, but no answer had come. Christian had never mentioned the child. He did not expect to find any softening in Karen. Her behaviour gave no sign of any. But brooding in her bed she wondered both what Christian expected of her and what had become of her child. Occasionally a glassy clinking could be heard. It came from the pearls. She would reach for them to assure herself of their presence. When she felt them, a smile of mysterious well-being appeared on her face. For three days Christian had not been out of his clothes. He fell asleep in a corner of the sofa. Since morning a formless disquietude had possessed him. Isolde Schirmacher, noisily bringing in Karen’s soup, wakened him. He put the chairs in their places, cleared the table of his books, put the checked cover on it, and opened the window. “It’s Sunday,” he said. “I don’t want soup,” Karen grumbled. “And I went and made it for you extry,” Isolde whined, “and a pork fricassee and all. You never want nothing.” “Eat the stuff yourself,” Karen said spitefully. Isolde carried the soup out again. “Can’t you close the window?” Karen whined. “Why do you always have to open it? A person can freeze to death.” Christian closed the window. “I’d like to know why she carried the soup out again,” Karen said after a while. “That’d suit her, to gorge herself on what’s meant for me. I’m hungry.” Christian went to the kitchen and brought in the soup. He sat down beside her bed, and held the plate in both hands while she laboriously ate the soup. “It’s hot,” she moaned, and pressed her head against the pillows. “Open the window so’s I can get a bit of air.” He opened the window. Karen looked at him with a dull wonder in her eyes. His patience was unfathomable to her. She wanted to get him to the point of scolding and showing her her place.