The latch must have been left open. Isolde Schirmacher had been the
last to go out. Twilight had just fallen when the door of the room
opened, and Niels Heinrich entered.
Karen did not get up. She looked over at him. She wanted to speak, but
the words seemed to perish in the drouth of her throat.
His face had its usual expression of impudent disgust. His flat,
eternally sniffing, and inquisitive nose had a yellow tinge. He wore a
blue cap, baggy trowsers, and a yellow shawl slung around his neck.
Wrinkling his nose like a dog he looked about him. Then he closed his
left eye and spat.
At last Karen murmured: “What do you want?”
He shrugged his shoulders, and showed his neglected teeth. In one,
near the corner of his mouth, he had a large gold-filling which was
evidently new.
“Well, what is it?” Karen asked again. There was the fear in her voice
that she felt so often now.
Again he showed his decayed front-teeth. It might have been a smile.
He went up to the chest of drawers and pulled out one of the drawers.
Deliberately he rummaged among its contents. He took out under
garments, neck-wear, stockings, corsets, and threw them on the floor.
He went on to the second drawer, then to the third, and littered the
floor with what he found. Then he approached the wardrobe, but it was
locked. He stretched out his hand toward her with a speaking gesture of
command. Karen saw the destruction and confusion he had caused, and
did not respond at once. An hallucination as of renewed impoverishment
flamed up in her blunted soul. Niels Heinrich seemed its messenger. She
was so in fear of him that she wanted to cry out. He made a grimace
and gently swung his hand about on the pivot of his wrist. Karen
acknowledged the compulsion of that gesture; she put her hand into her
pocket, and gave him the key.
He wrenched open the door of the wardrobe, peered in, hauled out
card-board boxes, which he calmly overturned, threw garments on the
floor as he had thrown the linen, finally discovered a wooden box,
and pried off the cover with his knife. He found a golden brooch, the
old brooch with the motto, “Ricordo di Venezia,” and a little silver
chain. He slipped these three objects into his pocket. Then he went
into the adjoining room, where Karen heard him moving about. There was
no expression in her staring eyes. He came back at the end of a few
minutes. It had grown dark, and in the inner room a candle which he had
lit was left burning. In passing he threw a contemptuous glance at the
cradle. He did not take the trouble to close the outer door behind him.
In the dim light that shone in from the inner room, Karen surveyed
her scattered possessions. Suddenly she put her hand into her bosom,
drew forth the photograph of Frau Wahnschaffe, and lost herself in an
absorbed and sombre contemplation of it.
She saw the pearls, only the pearls.