"Oh, you know very well—à Porta.… You thought I had not seen you? Yes, indeed I did, but only at the end; you remember when I laughed at Stephensen, and at all the others too."
Stephensen put on a very dignified face and stroked himself between the collar and the neck, a pet gesture of his. Minna turned still more away from him, and looked at me with a rather teasing smile.
"I did not know any others of the party,—and—besides"
"—besides you didn't wish to meet me in that company, and you were right."
But now Stephensen felt that it was high time to assert himself.
"I must say it is a very queer way in which you speak of the company we have associated with."
"You—not I. I have been obliged to put up with it."
"It is very regrettable that I could not do better for you! However, they were almost all people of the most intellectual set"
"Anyhow, I did not feel at home in that society, nor, as a matter of fact, would Harald have done so."
Stephensen compressed his lips and glanced maliciously at her.
"You yourself know best where you are at home."
Minna shuddered and pressed her hand on her breast, as if she was suffering acute pain. I suspected that in these words lay a hidden poison. The idea struck me that I sat here like a priest who accompanies a condemned victim to the scaffold, and that it was a police official who sat opposite to me.
I suffered indescribably, but I felt that the conversation must be turned into a peaceful channel at any price.
