I arrived at a time when the lamps were just beginning to be lit, or perhaps not yet, but the punctual master was already not at home. "He said he mustn't be late, so he just stepped out a moment ago," his wife told me, and showed me into the master's study.
In the study, besides a desk and chair, a great many books stood in a row with fine leather spines, illuminated by the electric light through the glass. The wife seated me on a cushion laid before the brazier and, excusing herself, said, "Please read some book lying about there until he returns," and went out. I felt exceedingly awkward, as if I were a guest waiting for the master's return. I sat in stiff form, smoking. I could hear the wife's voice in the sitting room, speaking with the maid. The study stood at the corner where the veranda of the sitting room ended and turned, so that by the layout of the building it enjoyed a quiet more removed even than the parlor. When the wife's voice ceased after a while, all was still. I waited like one expecting a thief, tense and alert, my attention fixed somewhere.
After some thirty minutes, the wife appeared again at the study door. "Oh," she said, and turned toward me a look of slight surprise. Then she regarded with amusement my formal, restrained posture, as if I were a caller.
"That must be uncomfortable."
"No, not uncomfortable."
"But boring, surely."
"Not at all. I'm so tense wondering if a thief will come that I'm not bored either."
The wife stood there smiling, a cup of black tea in her hand.
"This corner is no good for keeping watch," I said.
"Then if you'll excuse me, please come out to the middle. I thought you must be bored, so I made tea and brought it, but if the sitting room is fine, I'll serve you there."
I followed the wife out of the study. In the sitting room a clean long brazier held a kettle singing. There I was treated to tea and sweets. The wife said she must not be unable to sleep, and did not touch her cup.
"Does the master still go to such gatherings from time to time?"
"No, hardly ever. Lately he seems to grow fonder of avoiding the sight of people."
Seeing nothing particularly troubled in the wife's manner as she said this, I grew bold.
"Then is the wife the sole exception?"
"No, I am among those he dislikes."
"That's a lie," I said. "The wife says so knowing it is a lie."
"Why?"
"If you ask me, he grew to dislike the world because he came to love you."
"You being a man of learning, you are quite clever. To wield such empty reasoning. One might as well say he grew to dislike even me because he came to dislike the world. The same logic applies."
"Both may be said, but in this case mine is correct."
"No arguments. Men do love to argue, as if it amused them. With empty cups, how can they pledge and toast so tirelessly, I wonder."
The wife's words stung a little. Yet to the ear they were by no means fierce. She was not so modern as to make the other acknowledge her intellect and find in that a kind of pride. The wife seemed rather to treasure a heart sunk deeper than that.
