Lorm knew and feared this fact. His instinct told him, moreover, that what Judith feared in Christian’s actions was an evil caricature of her own fate; for she did not conceal the fact from him that she considered herself as one who had voluntarily fallen from her original station. But he thought too modestly of himself to resent this attitude of hers. To tremble at the opinions of people had become a part of her innermost nature. Although she was no longer upheld by the elements that had once nourished her aristocratic consciousness, her being was still rooted in them, and she felt herself degraded in her new life. But even this could not explain the wild fury to which she yielded at any mention of Christian’s name. Her attitude was that of a cat at bay. “I don’t want him to come back,” she hissed. “I don’t want to hear anything about that man. I’ve told you that a hundred times. But you’re always so flabby, and go in for everything. Couldn’t you have told him that I won’t listen? Get a car and drive to him at once. Forbid him absolutely to enter my house or to write me. But no! You’re such a coward. I’ll write to him myself. I’ll tell him that his visits will always be a pleasure to me, although his sudden fondness is queer enough, but that I will not, under any circumstances, listen to a word about that man.” Lorm did not dare to contradict her. With gentle superiority he said: “I don’t understand your extreme bitterness. No one considers your brother Christian to have done anything criminal. He is very eccentric, at the worst. He harms no one. What injury has he done you? Weren’t you and he very fond of each other? You used always to speak of him with an affectionate and proud emphasis. I don’t understand.” She became livid and drunk with rage. “Of course,” she jeered, “you! Does anything touch you? Have you any sense left for anything but grease-paint and old rags? Have you any conception of what those words stood for--Christian Wahnschaffe? What they meant? You in your world of lies and hollowness--what should you understand?” Lorm came a step nearer to her. He looked at her compassionately. She drew back with a gesture of aversion. She was beating, beating the fish. IX Karen Engelschall said: “You don’t have to worry; there’s no chance of his getting back before night. If he does, I’ll tell him you’re an acquaintance of mine.” She gave Girke a slow and watchful look. She sat by the window, resting her body with the broad satisfaction of those women of the people to whom sitting still is an achievement and a luxury. She was sewing a baby’s shift. “Anyhow we don’t have much to talk about,” she continued with a malicious enjoyment. “You’ve said your say. They offer me sixty thousand if I go and disappear. That’s all right enough. But if I wait they’ll go a good bit higher. I’m somebody now. I’ll think it over; you can come back next week.”