Johanna answered sarcastically that at all events it calmed her to see her person and presence extorting a consideration from him which she had not always enjoyed. Voss started. Her contemptuous expression revealed her meaning to him. He lowered his head, and for a while said nothing. Then bitterness gathered on his features. Johanna, gazing straight ahead, felt the danger to herself; she could have averted it; she knew that a courteous phrase would have robbed him of courage. But she disdained the way out. She wanted to defy him, and said frankly that she was not in the least hurt by his disappointment in her, since it was scarcely her ambition to impress him. Voss endured this in silence, too, but seemed to crouch as for an attack. Johanna asked with an innocent air whether he was still in Christian Wahnschaffe’s apartment, and still had charge of his friend’s private correspondence. Voss’s answer was dry and objective. He said that he had moved, since his means did not permit him such luxury. The mocking smile on Johanna’s lips showed him that she was acquainted with the situation. He added that he had better say that the source of his income had given out. He was living, he told her, in quarters befitting a student in Ansbacher Street, and had made the acquaintance of poverty again. He was not yet so poor, however, that he had to deny himself the pleasure of a guest; so he asked her whether she would take tea with him some day. He did not understand her laughter. Ah, yes, she was a young lady; he had forgotten. Well, perhaps she would condescend to the shop of a confiseur. His talk aroused her scorn and her impatience. It was Sunday, and the weather was gloomy. Night was falling. Music resounded from the pavilions in the public gardens. They met many soldiers, each with his girl. Johanna opened her umbrella and walked wearily. “It isn’t raining,” said Voss. She answered: “I do it so as not to have to think of the rain.” The real reason was that the umbrella widened the distance between them. “When do you see Christian?” she suddenly asked in a high-pitched voice, and looked away from him to the other side. “Do you see him often?” She regretted her question at once. It bared her heart to these ambushed eyes. But Voss had not even heard her. “You still resent the matter of your letter. You can’t forgive me for having spied upon your secret. You have no notion of what I gave you in return. You waste no thought on the fact that I revealed my whole soul to you. Perhaps it wasn’t even clear to you that all I wrote you in regard to Wahnschaffe was a confession such as one human being rarely makes to another. It was done by implication, and you, evidently, do not understand that method. I probably overestimated both your understanding and your good will.”