“As well as your wife, Wolf? Sons who have to support wives can’t tackle mothers too. You ought to have thought of that six months ago.” The shamelessness of her words was relieved by the ironic glint in her eyes. “But you must have come to your mother’s defense at any rate over that young lady of yours; for, when I met her on the street three weeks ago, she stopped and talked quite pleasantly to me! She told me you were still friends with that bookseller girl; and I told her she was far too pretty to be jealous of that melancholy little shadow.”

Wolf frowned, picked up The Trumpet-Major , put it down again, and began nervously scratching its cover with his fingernails. He thought to himself: “It’s absolutely impossible to talk of any woman to another woman without betraying the absent one. They must have blood! Every word you speak is a betrayal. They’re not satisfied otherwise.”

To turn the conversation from Gerda he launched out at random.