ame time,
with hardly a breeze stirring. How should you like to take a drive
with me? A long one, not merely out through the "Plantation." In the
sleigh, of course, with the sleigh-bells on and the white snow
blankets. Then if we are back by four you can take a rest, and at
seven we shall be at Gieshuebler's and hear Trippelli."

Effi took his hand. "How good you are, Geert, and how indulgent! For I
must have seemed to you very childish, or at least very childlike,
first in the episode of fright and then, later, when I asked you to
sell the house, but worst of all in what I said about the Prince. I
urged you to break off all connection with him, and that would be
ridiculous. For after all he is the one man who has to decide our
destiny. Mine, too. You don't know how ambitious I am. To tell the
truth, it was only out of ambition that I married you. Oh, you must
not put on such a serious expression. I love you, you know. What is it
we say when we pluck a blossom and tear off the petals? 'With all my
heart, with grief and pain, beyond compare.'" She burst out laughing.
"And now tell me," she continued, as Innstetten still kept silent,
"whither shall we go?"

"I thought, to the railway station, by a roundabout way, and then back
by the turnpike. We can dine at the station or, better, at
Golchowski's, at the Prince Bismarck Hotel, which we passed on the day
of our return home, as you perhaps remember. Such a visit always has a
good effect, and then I can have a political conversation with the
Starost by the grace of Effi, and even if he does not amount to much
personally he keeps his hotel in good condition and his cuisine in
still better. The people here are connoisseurs when it comes to eating
and drinking."

It was about eleven when they had this conversation. At twelve Kruse
drove the sleigh up to the door and Effi got in. Johanna was going to
bring a foot bag and furs, but Effi, after all that she had juat
passed through, felt so strongly the need of fresh air that she took
only a double blanket and refused everything else. Innstetten said to
Kruse: "Now, Kruse, we want to drive to the station where you and I
were this morning. The people will wonder at it, but that doesn't
matter. Say, we drive here past the 'Plantation,' and then to the left
toward the Kroschentin church tower. Make the horses fly. We must be
at the station at one."

Thus began the drive. Over the white roofs of the city hung a bank of
smoke, fo