She stood and looked at me.
"So," she said, "so—" Only the feathers of her egret hat trembled.
Then suddenly, before I could realise what was happening, I saw the scented, made-up woman grow old before my eyes. It was as if time beat down on her like rain in a thunderstorm, every second a year—the strain broke, the triumph was extinguished, the face decayed.
Wrinkles crept into it like worms; and then, as with a groping, uncertain movement she reached toward the back of a chair and sat down as if she were afraid of breaking something, it might have been no longer the same woman—so weary, dilapidated and old did she look.
"What did he have?" she asked without moving her lips.
"It happened suddenly," said I. "Quite suddenly."
She was not listening. She was looking at her hands.
"What shall I do?" she murmured. "Whatever shall I do now?"
I waited some time; I felt disgusting.
"But surely you have somebody you can go to," said I at last. "It would be as well not to stay here.
You wouldn't want to stay here anyway—"
"That's all different now, though," she replied, without looking up. "Whatever shall I do—"
"But surely you've somebody waiting for you.
Go to him and talk it over with him.
Then after Christmas go to the District Police.
The things are there, the bank balance as well.
You have to report there to draw the money."
"Money, money," she murmured dully. "What money?"
"Quite a bit.
Twelve hundred marks more or less."
She lifted her head.
Her eyes suddenly had a mad lo"ok.
"No," she shrieked; "it isn't true!"
I made no reply.
"Say it isn't true," she whispered. "Perhaps it isn't," said I. "On the other hand he may have been quietly keeping back the odd penny in case of need."
She stood up.
She was suddenly completely changed.
Her movements had something jerky and mechanical about them.
She brought her face up quite close to mine.
"Yes, it is true," she hissed. "I feel it's true!
The wretch!
Oh, the wretch!
To let me go through all that, and then it's like this.
But I will take it and I'll chuck it away all in one night, chuck it out on the street I will, so that nothing is left of it.
Nothing.
Nothing."
I kept silent.
I had done enough.
She was over the start, she knew Hasse was dead, the rest she must now settle herself.
She would probably be bowled over again when she heard that he had hanged himself, but that was her own affair.
Hasse couldn't be brought to life again on her account.
She was crying now.
Tears simply welled out of her. She cried in a high, plaintive way like a child.
It lasted some time.
I would have given anything to be able to smoke a cigarette.
I can't bear seeing people cry.
At last she did stop. She dried her face, mechanically took out her powder box and powdered herself without looking in the glass.
Then she put the box away again but forgot to close her handbag.
"I don't know anything any more," said she in a broken voice. "I don't know anything.
He was probably a good husband."