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got a certain satisfaction out of incivility to Cacilie. But the
three elderly ladies were not content. Two were widows, and
one, a Dutchwoman, was a spinster of masculine appear-
ance; they paid the smallest possible sum for their pension,
and gave a good deal of trouble, but they were permanent
and therefore had to be put up with. They went to the Frau
Professor and said that something must be done; it was dis-
graceful, and the house was ceasing to be respectable. The
Frau Professor tried obstinacy, anger, tears, but the three
old ladies routed her, and with a sudden assumption of vir-
tuous indignation she said that she would put a stop to the
whole thing.
After luncheon she took Cacilie into her bed-room and
began to talk very seriously to her; but to her amazement
the girl adopted a brazen attitude; she proposed to go about
as she liked; and if she chose to walk with the Chinaman
she could not see it was anybody’s business but her own.
The Frau Professor threatened to write to her uncle.
‘Then Onkel Heinrich will put me in a family in Berlin
for the winter, and that will be much nicer for me. And Herr
Sung will come to Berlin too.’
The Frau Professor began to cry. The tears rolled down
her coarse, red, fat cheeks; and Cacilie laughed at her.
‘That will mean three rooms empty all through the win-
ter,’ she said.
Then the Frau Professor tried another plan. She appealed
to Fraulein Cacilie’s better nature: she was kind, sensible,
tolerant; she treated her no longer as a child, but as a grown
woman. She said that it wouldn’t be so dreadful, but a

1 Of Human Bondage