He catches sight of her sorrowful expression and breaks off in spite of himself, adding merely: ‘I don’t understand you, Anna. You’re looking like – I don’t know what you look like.’

Anna replies slowly: ‘I never thought things would come to this with us two. But I suppose I didn’t know you after all.’

‘Really?’ says Martin coldly. All he wants is for her to leave him as soon as possible.

‘I thought you would join them,’ she says. ‘In one way or another, but – everyone ought to help somehow.’

‘Where did you hear that?’

‘I know it and thought it out for myself!’ she replies furiously. ‘But all you want to do is wriggle out of it. And what do you think will become of you afterwards?’

‘You talk as if I were the only person who feels he has to work with what he is best at, where he can make the best contribution. Is that to be despised ? If you look around you, you’ll find a fair number working like that, and an important number, because they are the people who will build further. They really will have something to do afterwards.’

‘This only sounds as if it’s true, Martin. It’s not right. I don’t care what arguments all the others use to avoid the risks and the struggle. It’s you I’ve been worrying about, what you do. And surely that’s what’s important for you, too, not how few or how many there are who are set on avoiding it.’

Listen to her, said a mocking voice inside Martin. She wants to be rid of you, that’s what it is. She’s thought this up so that she can lay the blame on you.

‘Have you come here to wipe out everything between us?’ he asks threateningly.

She takes a step backwards at his bitter tone and says helplessly, ‘Is there anything left of it for you, then?’

‘I doubt if there is for you either,’ answers Martin. ‘I can see you’ve come to put an end to it – and to put the blame on me, of course.’

They are both worrying at something that used to be beautiful and precious to them, so fragile that to begin with it could scarcely be breathed upon. Now they are tearing at it and trampling it underfoot. It is the storm raging in the house that is to blame: the cracking, the tension that results from it. Some things stand beneath the trembling pressure, others give way. Here something of value between two people has fallen to pieces. Anna still clings to it.

‘Don’t say anything more, Martin, or there’ll be nothing else for it.’

‘For it?’

‘For us. For what we have. If you go on like this it can’t be put right afterwards.’

‘You’re afraid of me, Anna!’ he says loudly, tingling with daring.

‘That was a dangerous word to use. I’d better go and leave you to pad yourself in well.’

‘You needn’t worry about me,’ he answers, his tongue a little stiff.