The only thing of which I am not certain is, who will take the first step—the first step to disaster. Holk is easy-going and modest almost to a fault—he is too respectful and chivalrous and he has become used to playing second fiddle to his wife all the time. It’s natural enough. In the first place, he is impressed by her beauty—she really was very beautiful and still is, in fact. Then he is impressed by her intelligence or what he takes to be intelligence. Finally, and perhaps most of all, he is impressed by her piety. But recently and, I’m afraid, all too rapidly, there has been a change and he has become impatient and touchy and sarcastic. Only this afternoon, it struck me how much his tone has changed. Take that question of the marble mangers. My sister took what was intended more or less as a joke with deadly seriousness and replied half in anger and half sentimentally. Now, three years ago, Holk would have let that pass but today he took it up sharply and made fun of her because she is only happy when she is talking of graves and chapels and painting angels on walls.”

Schwarzkoppen had punctuated all this with an occasional “only too true” and left no doubt as to his agreement. But when Arne, who wanted something more explicit than mere agreement from Schwarzkoppen, stopped talking, the Principal betrayed little desire to expatiate on the subject, being reluctant to take the bull by the horns. Pointing towards Arnewieck, he said: “How lovely the town looks in the moonlight! And how well the dyke there makes the roofs stand out and the gables between the poplars and willows! And now St. Catherine’s: listen to the sound across the bay. I bless the day that brought me here to your beautiful country.”

“And I must thank you for those kind words, Schwarzkoppen, because we all like to hear someone praising our own country. But may I point out that you are evading the issue? Here am I, begging you to stand by me in a very difficult matter, much more difficult than you imagine, and all you can do is to admire the landscape. Of course it’s lovely. But I’m not going to let you get away like that. With the influence you have over my sister, you must approach her through the Bible, and convince her, with half a dozen examples from the Gospels, that things cannot be allowed to continue as they are, that her attitude is nothing but self-righteousness, that real love has nothing to do with this hidden pride that is merely parading as humility, in other words, that she must mend her ways and fall in with her husband’s wishes instead of making the house unbearable for him. Yes, and you can add, too—and there is some truth in this as well—that he would probably long since have given up his post in Copenhagen if he wasn’t glad to escape now and again from the depressing effect of his wife’s virtues.”

“Ah, my dear Baron,” replied Schwarzkoppen, “I’m not really trying to evade the issue, not in the least. I have all the goodwill in the world to co-operate, within my powers. But goodwill is not enough. If your sister were a Catholic instead of a Protestant and I were a Redemptorist or even a Jesuit father instead of the principal of a seminary in Arnewieck, the matter would be very simple. But that is not the case. There’s no question of authority. Our relationship is purely a social one and if I were to try to play the father confessor or healer of souls, I should be intruding and doing something that lies outside my competence.”

“Intruding?” repeated Arne with a laugh. “But my dear Schwarzkoppen, I cannot accept the idea that you should feel troubled by thoughts of Petersen when he is nearly eighty years old and has reached the point where any idea of rivalry or any possibility of misinterpretation must be out of the question.”

“I don’t mean Petersen,” said Schwarzkoppen. “He has long ago left all those petty jealousies behind that are normally only too common with my pastoral colleagues. He would certainly approve my role of reformer and miracle-worker. But we must not always take advantage of what chance offers us.