The girl stirred again, more uneasily than before. There came a frown between her eyebrows, and her nostrils quivered. She turned her head from side to side, like a person in a fever or a person whose limbs and arms are paralyzed. Deep in Wolf’s heart, as he stared at her, there gathered a fundamental decision. Formless at first, it rolled together in the recesses of his nature like a rack of clouds on a misty horizon. Then suddenly it tossed forth a coherent resolution. “I won’t let the water-rat keep her. Cuckold or no cuckold, I love her. She’s been miserable about it. I won’t give her up!”

At that moment, disturbed by the magnetism of his look, Gerda opened her eyes. He bent and kissed her; and as he lifted his head again, he saw a lovely smile flicker across her face. “She’d forgotten the whole thing!” he thought, as he watched this smile vanish away and the same rigid, unhappy look come back. She made a movement to extricate her arm from the bedclothes, but the look upon her face was sufficient. He scrambled to his knees and slipped out of bed.