He doubtless heard it, but did not allow himself to be interrupted.
His wife was now standing close behind him.

Four and twenty years his junior, she seemed like a timid girl, as she raised her arm, yet did not venture to divert her husband's attention from his business.
She waited quietly till he had signed the first paper, then turned her pretty head aside, and blushing faintly, exclaimed with downcast eyes: "It is I, Peter!" "Very well, my child," he answered curtly, raising the second paper nearer his eyes.
"Peter!" she exclaimed a second time, still more eagerly, but with timidity.

"I have something to tell you." Van der Werff turned his head, cast a hasty, affectionate glance at her, and said: "Now, child?
You see I am busy, and there is my hat." "But Peter!" she replied, a flash of something like indignation sparkling in her eyes, as she continued in a voice pervaded with a slightly perceptible tone of complaint: "We haven't said anything to each other to-day.

My heart is so full, and what I would fain say to you is, must surely--" "When I come home Maria, not now," he interrupted, his deep voice sounding half impatient, half beseeching.

"First the city and the country--then love-making." At these words, Maria raised her head proudly, and answered with quivering lips: "That is what you have said ever since the first day of our marriage." "And unhappily--unhappily--I must continue to say so until we reach the goal," he answered firmly.