"Get up, Effi. What is the matter with you?"

Effi arose quickly. However, she did not sit down on the sofa again,
but drew up a high-backed chair, apparently because she did not feel
strong enough to hold herself up without support.

"What is the matter with you?" repeated Innstetten. "I thought you had
spent happy days here. And now you cry out, 'Thank God!' as though
your whole life here had been one prolonged horror. Have I been a
horror to you? Or is it something else? Speak!"

"To think that you can ask such a question!" said Effi, seeking by a
supreme effort to suppress the trembling of her voice. "Happy days!
Yes, certainly, happy days, but others, too. Never have I been
entirely free from fear here, never. Never yet a fortnight that it did
not look over my shoulder again, that same face, the same sallow
complexion. And these last nights while you were away, it came back
again, not the face, but there was shuffling of feet again, and Rollo
set up his barking again, and Roswitha, who also heard it, came to my
bed and sat down by me and we did not go to sleep till day began to
dawn. This is a haunted house and I was expected to believe in the
ghost, for you are a pedagogue. Yes, Geert, that you are. But be that
as it may, thus much I know, I have been afraid in this house for a
whole year and longer, and when I go away from here the fear will
leave me, I think, and I shall be free again."

Innstetten had not taken his eyes off her and had followed every word.
What could be the meaning of "You are a pedagogue," and the other
statement that preceded, "And I was expected to believe in the ghost?"
What was all that about? Where did it come from? And he felt a slight
suspicion arising and becoming more firmly fixed. But he had lived
long enough to know that all signs deceive, and that in our jealousy,
in spite of its hundred eyes, we often go farther astray than in the
blindness of our trust. Possibly it was as she said, and, if it was,
why should she not cry out: "Thank God!"

And so, quickly looking at the matter from all possible sides, he
overcame his suspicion and held out his hand to her across the table:
"Pardon me, Effi, but I was so much surprised by it all. I suppose, of
course, it is my fault. I have always been too much occupied with
myself. We men are all egoists. But it shall be different from now on.
There is one good thing about Berlin, that is certain: there are no
haunted houses there. How cou