Although Fru Wangen had been frightened into turning to her husband, clung to his innocence, and felt a desire to support him and show him confidence, she could not speak to him yet; for she did not want to say anything unkind, and she could not yet say anything kind. The silence was all the greater because there was no sound of whimpering, no gentle breathing, no little bodies turning over in bed or requiring covering. Husband and wife were thrown back upon each other, and the silence and the breach between them forced them to look into themselves, where each saw the old man hanging in the barn.
Wangen was in bed before his wife, and lay looking at her. It took her so long to undress; it was as though she dreaded going to bed. Now and again she looked round bewildered, as if she expected to find the children there after all.
"It's not my fault this time at any rate," he thought; "but she'll lay the blame on to me all the same."
When at last she was in bed, lying on her back with her hands under her head, looking up at the ceiling, he had an uncomfortable feeling that she was capable of anything, perhaps that very night when he was asleep. A tallow candle was burning on a stool by his bedside, but he dared not put it out.
"Aren't you going to put out the candle?" she asked in a dull voice, still looking up at the ceiling.
He had to put it out at last. The grey light of the spring night showed in the window, which had no blind, and they both lay with wide-open eyes fixed on this faint light, as if they were afraid of closing them or looking into darkness. Neither of them had any pretext for rising to attend to one or other of the children; so they were forced to lie still and let the thoughts put up their heads out of the night. She seemed to see her father as he was the last time he came to her, saw him down in the garden, heard his opinion of her husband. "Why wasn't I more compliant then?" she thought. "It's too late now! I can never make up for it! What have I done?"
Wangen lived over again the scene when he had borrowed the last ten thousand krones. He lied, he exaggerated, he persuaded--and believed in it. That was how it seemed with all his ideals now. He believed in them; they intoxicated him slightly; but just look at the consequences!