h society where I can make myself useful. But it is not to be
thought of. The women in charge wouldn't take me, they couldn't. That
is the most terrible thing of all, that the world is so closed to one,
that it even forbids one to take a part in charitable work. I can't
even give poor children a lesson after hours to help them catch up."

"That would not do for your Ladyship. The children always have such
greasy shoes on, and in wet weather there is so much steam and smoke,
your Ladyship could never stand it."

Effi smiled. "You are probably right, Roswitha, but it is a bad sign
that you should be right, and it shows me that I still have too much
of the old Effi in me and that I am still too well off."

Roswitha would not agree to that. "Anybody as good as your Ladyship
can't be too well off. Now you must not always play such sad music.
Sometimes I think all will be well yet, something will surely turn
up."

And something did turn up. Effi desired to become a painter, in spite
of the precentor's daughter from Polzin, whose conceit as an artist
she still remembered as exceedingly disagreeable. Although she laughed
about the plan herself, because she was conscious she could never
rise above the lowest grade of dilettantism, nevertheless she went at
her work with zest, because she at last had an occupation and that,
too, one after her own heart, because it was quiet and peaceful. She
applied for instruction to a very old professor of painting, who was
well-informed concerning the Brandenburgian aristocracy, and was, at
the same time, very pious, so that Effi seemed to be his heart's
delight from the outset. He probably thought, here was a soul to be
saved, and so he received her with extraordinary friendliness, as
though she had been his daughter. This made Effi very happy, and the
day of her first painting lesson marked for her a turning point toward
the good. Her poor life was now no longer so poor, and Roswitha was
triumphant when she saw that she had been right and something had
turned up after all.

Thus things went on for considerably over a year. Coming again in
contact with people made Effi happy, but it also created within her
the desire to renew and extend associations. Longing for Hohen-Cremmen
came over her at times with the force of a true passion, and she
longed still more passionately to see Annie. After all she was her
child, and when she began to turn this thought over in her mind and,
at the same ti