What was less usual was her awareness that, it being Monday, Rolf would be at work: she could, if she wished, go beyond the dozen words she normally felt it decent to speak down a telephone and try to talk to Louisa a little bit, to get some sense, perhaps, of whether Gustav was right to think Louisa was afraid. She hoped it wasn’t true—for Louisa’s sake, of course (mostly for Louisa’s sake, she told herself sternly), but also for her own, so she could stop wondering if Gustav was right to accuse her. She even asked herself if it could possibly be her lack of pity, of imagination, that accounted for the change in him, if people would look at her one day and say, That woman drove her husband mad. Gustav had spoken to Kurt in his usual way the evening before, inquiring after his classes and the route the bus would take to New York as though nothing was wrong. She told herself she was glad—that had been her great fear, she reminded herself, that he would break down in front of one of the children.
