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Updated: June 15, 2025
After that incident Höflinger walked up and down in silence and listened to Spiele, who set about removing a double veil from his eyes. She told him what a distant and strange husband he was, his head filled with the business of other people and his heart never heeding the need and the loneliness of his wife.
The old workingman who had opened the meeting got up once more and all heads turned to him. So they passed over the rugged cliffs of Victor's address to the order of the day and listened to the final words of the old leader. Yet they had taken the measure of the long-necked Swiss fighter just as Spiele had done.
Victor expected Höflinger to take cognizance of it; when nothing of the kind was forthcoming, he picked up that half of his heart which he had thrown at Höflinger's feet and with the other half placed it in the hands of Spiele. Now she owned his whole heart and openly too by Jove! The long one knew it, and she knew it, and both knew that he knew it.
So the question was for a long time undecided, while the relation of the couple assumed a critical intensity, which they both felt as a sort of sweet bitterness, with the sweet or the bitter element alternately prevailing. Sometimes Spiele wept; then again she indulged in all sorts of tricks that she had learned from her father and his apprentices.
At the second or third game she would laugh, or in dealing throw eight cards at him, and he would placidly take them up, even if he had been reading a book. Victor never knew the moods of the pretty woman to produce even a shadow of annoyance or to spoil an evening. On fine Sundays they went out on their wheels into the country. The two men had Spiele between them.
Then Spiele asked him to wear soft sandals like Victor, but he preferred his stiff boots. However, he procured hooks which kept the foot in place and allowed him to enjoy the advantage of the leather surface. Now she was worried lest the hooks should prove a dangerous obstacle in jumping off the wheel. She consulted Victor; but he only said, it depended.
Leaving this ingenious badinage with the defence of the serious and sentimental Schiller, "Hoher Sinn liegt oft in Kindischen Spiele,"
Victor would have liked, with his glowing gaze, to hide her in a burning bush, so that nobody else could approach her. One evening he forgot himself in Höflinger's presence. Spiele had teased him about his red necktie, which began to look black with wear; she asked whether he would always stay a Garibaldi and offered to sew a new one for him, if he would let her remove the old.
Rakishly perched on his black hair was a sporting-cap with green and brown pattern. Under his Adam's apple, like a burning heart that had been pushed up, was a blood-red necktie, the ends of which flared out from under his turned-back white collar. He had strapped his trousers, so they bulged outward, but Spiele immediately noticed that he had crooked legs and wore tan sandals over gray hose.
Spiele asked Höflinger with subdued voice whether he had been hurt and inquired about the wheels, and he bent over them. Spiele's wheel was undamaged. His own well-worn machine had more than stood the test; he had only to adjust the bar and they could go on; the bump which the frame had received was only a new mark of honor. Spiele thanked Victor for his assistance.
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