Largely because of his affection for her, though partly because of his hatred of his former employers on whom he thought absurdly to revenge himself, Ding Dong had stolen the little creature from the factory. He made her a cage, which she seldom occupied, her favourite station being the sill of the window where Emil had his work-bench. There she crouched among the tools with her little, worried, half-human face turned to the inventor, and now and then she reached out a black hand and laid it questioningly on his sleeve. Seeing his pet thus safely cared for, Ding Dong was free to spend himself in the service of his new master. He ran errands, bustled about in a flurry of often useless activity, and even fitted up the tiny room set apart for Annie. At first the young wife agreed to everything.
Crushed by a stormy interview with her father in which he had forbidden her to cross his threshold, in the early days of her marriage Annie accepted the privations of her new mode of life without a word. She thought to endear herself to her husband. But Emil, far from sympathizing with her position, was honestly unconscious of it. Carried away by the interest of his work, he forgot her. When made aware of her, bitterness filled his soul. He felt himself guilty toward her. Never the less, her tears, her letters to her mother, which he was forced to read and approve, her constant efforts on his behalf with her father, above all, her insistence that he go back and accept the situation of expert examiner, which was finally grudgingly offered him,--all this irked him in the extreme.
"Go back there--after the way he's treated me?" he cried,--"you ask it?"
"I thought--I thought--" murmured Annie, "we are very miserable."
"Well?" His significant tone seemed to imply, "Who's to blame?"
He now perceived clearly that she hampered him, that he could have got on very much better without her.
"You are not interested in my work," he cried, blaming her; "a woman is always like that. No detachment with them is possible. I ought to have understood this."
Then Annie broke down, and contrition overcame him. He took her in his arms where she cuddled like a little kitten.
"I'm no one for you," he whispered, while a fierce sigh rent him.