[Gutenberg 30732] • The Son of His Mother

The husband and wife were of a literary turn of mind, and as they had the money to cultivate their artistic tastes he wrote a little and she painted. They also played and sang duets together, at least they had done so when they were first married; now they went to concerts and the opera more frequently instead. They were liked wherever they went, they had friends, they were called "charming people," and still something was wanting to complete their happiness--they had no children. And they would probably not have any now, as they had been married for some time, and the likelihood of children being born to them was very remote. No doubt he sighed and knit his brow in unguarded moments when he sat at his desk in his office, but especially when he passed through the villages in the Brandenburg March on the rides he took in the more distant environs of Berlin--partly for his health, partly because he still retained the liking for riding from the time he was in the cavalry--and saw swarms of little flaxen-haired children romping on the sandy roads. However, he did not let his wife perceive that he missed something, for he loved her. But she could not control herself in the same manner. The longer she was married the more nervous she became. At times she felt irritated with her husband for no reason. She persistently turned her eyes away from the announcement of births in the newspapers with a certain shrinking, and, if her glance happened once in a way to fall on one in which happy parents notified the birth of a son, she put the paper aside hastily.