“Yes, papa, I got my mind made up”—­like most sluggish spirits there was an immense momentum about Thekla’s mind, once get it fairly started it was not to be diverted—­“you never killed yourself before you used to git mad at the boss.  You was afraid he would send you away; and now you have sent yourself away you don’t want to live, ’cause you do not know how you can git along without the shop.  But you want to get back, you want to get back more as you want to kill yourself.  Yes, papa, I know, I know where you did used to go, nights.  Now”—­she changed her speech unconsciously to the tongue of her youth—­“it is not fair, it is not fair to me that thou shouldst treat me like that, thou dost belong to me, also; so I say, my Kurt, wilt thou make a bargain with me?  If I shall get thee back thy place wilt thou promise me never to kill thyself any more?”

Lieders had not once looked up at her during the slow, difficult sentences with their half choked articulation; but he was experiencing some strange emotions, and one of them was a novel respect for his wife.  All he said was:  “’Taint no use talking.  I won’t never ask him to take me back, once.”

“Well, you aint asking of him. I ask him.  I try to git you back, once!”

“I tell you, it aint no use; I know the boss, he aint going to be letting womans talk him over; no, he’s a good man, he knows how to work his business himself!”

“But would you promise me, Kurt?”

Lieders’s eyes blurred with a mild and dreamy mist; he sighed softly.  “Thekla, you can’t see how it is.  It is like you are tied up, if I don’t can do that; if I can then it is always that I am free, free to go, free to stay.  And for you, Thekla, it is the same.”

Thekla’s mild eyes flashed.  “I don’t believe you would like it so you wake up in the morning and find me hanging up in the kitchen by the clothes-line!”

Lieders had the air of one considering deeply.  Then he gave Thekla one of the surprises of her life; he rose from his chair, he walked in his shuffling, unheeled slippers across the room to where the old woman sat; he put one arm on the back of the chair and stiffly bent over her and kissed her.

“Lieber Herr Je!” gasped Thekla.

“Then I shall go, too, pretty quick, that is all, mamma,” said he.

Thekla wiped her eyes.  A little pause fell between them, and in it they may have both remembered vanished, half-forgotten days when life had looked differently to them, when they had never thought to sit by their own fireside and discuss suicide.  The husband spoke first; with a reluctant, half-shamed smile, “Thekla, I tell you what, I make the bargain with you; you git me back that place, I don’t do it again, ’less you let me; you don’t git me back that place, you don’t say notings to me.”

The apron dropped from the withered, brown hands to the floor.  Again there was silence; but not for long; ghastly as was the alternative, the proposal offered a chance to escape from the terror that was sapping her heart.