It had been quite an ordinary night.

“ ‘Oh, Constance, is it done?’ ” said he, quoting the title of a popular comedy hit. For the first time she noticed the humorous wrinkles round his eyes, and that he winked when he joked.

“Oh, certainly,” she rejoined.

“All right,” he said, drawling the words. “What is hardly enough for one is barely sufficient for two. Come along. Are you ready?”

It was a strange sensation, descending the stairs of a repulsive bed-and-breakfast house by the side of a man to whom one now belonged. When she stumbled over a badly laid stair carpet, he had said “Upsey” quite absent-mindedly. Probably he did not realize she was with him.

Suddenly he had stopped. She remembered it vividly. They were downstairs in the false marble splendor and stucco of the entrance. “By the way, my name is Wolfgang Pagel,” he said with a slight bow.

“Pleased to meet you,” she replied in the correct manner. “Mine is Petra Ledig.”

“Whether you’ll be pleased I don’t know,” he had laughed. “Come on, little one. I shall call you Peter. Petra is too Biblical and too stony. But your surname’s good enough for me and can stay as it is.”

III

Petra was still too much taken up with what was happening to pay much attention to the sense of Wolfgang’s words. Later she learned from him that Petra meant “rock,” and that it had first been borne by the disciple Peter, on whom Christ had founded his church.

Altogether she learned a good deal during the year she lived with him. Not that he behaved like a teacher. But it was inevitable that, during the long hours of their being together—for he was without a genuine occupation—he should talk a good deal with her, if only because they could not always sit in silence side by side in their dreary room. And when Petra gained confidence, she often asked a question, either to stop him brooding or because it gave her pleasure to hear him talk. For instance: “Wolf, how do they make cheese?” or: “Wolf, is it true that there is a man in the moon?”

He never laughed at her, nor did he ever refuse to answer her questions. He replied slowly and carefully, for the knowledge he had gained at the military college was of no great consequence. And where he was not informed, he took her with him and they went into one of the big libraries and he consulted their volumes. She would sit quietly, some little book in front of her, which, however, she did not read, and look about her awestruck at the big room in which people were sitting so still, so gently turning the pages, as quietly as if they were moving in their sleep. It always seemed like a fairy tale that she, a little shopgirl, an illegitimate child, who had just been on the point of going under, was now able to enter buildings where educated people, who had surely never heard of the rottenness with which she had been forced to make such an intimate acquaintance, were sitting. By herself she would never have dared to come, although certain poor creatures allowed to sit along the walls showed that not only wisdom was being sought here, but also warmth, light, and just that which she, too, sensed in these books—a profound peace.

When Wolfgang had learned enough, they went out and he told her what he had gleaned. She listened and forgot it, or remembered it but not accurately—that, however, was of no importance. What mattered was that he took her seriously, that she was something other than a creature whom he liked and who was good for him.

Sometimes, when she had spoken without thinking, she would exclaim, overwhelmed by her ignorance: “Oh, Wolf, I’m so terribly stupid. I’ll never learn anything. I shall remain stupid forever.”

Even then he did not laugh at the outburst, but entered into her feelings in a friendly and serious spirit, declaring that fundamentally it was unimportant whether one knew how cheese was made or not. For one would never know how to make it as well as the cheesemaker did.