“In him!” His utterance was tormented. She understood him, and with an infinitely sinuous movement glided from his arms. “What do you want of me?” she asked, and rearranged her abundant brown hair with nervous gestures. “I want to know,” he answered, “to know at last. I cannot bear this any longer. What happened between you two? How do you explain the intimate tone of your letter to him, and your questions whether he had already forgotten you, whether you dared even ask? No doubt you played the well-known game--the dangerous, lecherous game of moths in the lamplight. I am not so stupid as not to have guessed that. But how far did you venture toward the lamp--as far as the chimney or as far as the flame? And when he left you, what demands had you the right to make? What was he to you? What is he?” It was the first time that Voss had spoken out. The question had been strangling him. He had set little traps for Johanna and searched her expression, resented her evasions and yet respected her delicacy. And all that had heightened his impatience and suspicion. The fingers of one hand clenched under his chin, he stood there lean and rocking strangely to and fro. Johanna said nothing. A smile, half mocking, half of suffering, hovered about her lips. She wished that she were far away. Voss gritted his teeth and went on: “Don’t think it’s jealousy. And if it is--perhaps there is no other word--yet I do not mean what you were taught to think it in the poisoned gardens in which you grew up. Why have you not been frank with me? Am I not worthy of so much? Did you not feel my dumb beseeching? I need not tell you what is at stake. If you did not suspect it, you would not fear to speak. From my childhood on I have lived in outer servitude and inner obedience. I have been taught the lofty and sacred ideal of chastity of our faith. Only despair over the unreachable farness of that ideal plunged me into the sinks of the earth’s iniquity. And so I place on innocence and spotless purity quite another value than the sleek little gentlemen, the trained animals, of your world. I who stand before you am sin and the sense of sin, with all its misery and uncleanness; and you can save me by a word. I have confessed to you all the cries of my own breast. Have I not said enough? Yet even what I have said seems shameless beside the vanity of your reserve. Can I do nothing but sting your senses, you heathen girl, and never reach your vitals or your soul? Confess, or I will tear the truth from you with red-hot pincers. Shall I have waited and renounced, to be fed on the leavings of another’s satiety? Did you live with him? Speak! Did he cheat me of your purity--he who has cheated me of everything? Speak!”