"I am just going to post these letters now and see whether the porter
has got the other paper. I understood you to say, didn't I, that he
sent Lena to get one? There must be more in it; this is as good as
nothing at all."

CHAPTER XXX

[After Effi and Mrs. Zwicker had been in Ems for nearly three weeks
they took breakfast one morning in the open air. The postman was late
and Effi was impatient, as she had received no letter from Innstetten
for four days. The coming of a pretty waitress to clear away the
breakfast dishes started a conversation about pretty housemaids, and
Effi spoke enthusiastically of her Johanna's unusual abundance of
beautiful flaxen hair. This led to a discussion of painful
experiences, in the course of which Effi admitted that she knew what
sin meant, but she distinguished between an occasional sin and a
habitual sin. Mrs. Zwicker was indulging in a tirade against the
pleasure resorts and the ill-sounding names of places in the environs
of Berlin, when the postman came. There was nothing from Innstetten,
but a large registered letter from Hohen-Cremmen. Effi felt an
unaccountable hesitation to open it. Overcoming this she found in the
envelope a long letter from her mother and a package of banknotes,
upon which her father had written with a red pencil the sum they
represented. She leaned back in the rocking chair and began to read.
Before she had got very far, the letter fell out of her hands and all
the blood left her face. With an effort she picked up the letter and
started to go to her room, asking Mrs. Zwicker to send the maid. By
holding to the furniture as she dragged herself along she was able to
reach her bed, where she fell in a swoon.]

CHAPTER XXXI

Minutes passed. When Effi came to she got up and sat on a chair by the
window and gazed out into the quiet street. Oh, if there had only been
turmoil and strife outside! But there was only the sunshine on the
macadam road and the shadows of the lattice and the trees. The feeling
that she was alone in the world came over her with all its might. An
hour ago she was a happy woman, the favorite of all who knew her, and
now an outcast. She had read only the beginning of the letter, but
enough to have the situation clearly before her. Whither? She had no
answer to this question, and yet she was full of deep longing to
escape from her present environment, to get away from this Zwicker
woman, to whom the whole affair was merely