division of the time--Tell me
now how Rollo is."

"Rollo is very well, but papa says he is getting so lazy. He lies in
the sun all the time."

"That I can readily believe. He was that way when you were quite
small. And now, Annie, today we have just seen each other, you know;
will you visit me often?"

"Oh, certainly, if I am allowed to."

"We can take a walk in the Prince Albrecht Garden."

"Oh, certainly, if I am allowed to."

"Or we may go to Schilling's and eat ice cream, pineapple or vanilla
ice cream. I always liked vanilla best."

"Oh, certainly, if I am allowed to."

At this third "if I am allowed to" the measure was full. Effi sprang
up and flashed the child a look of indignation.

"I believe it is high time you were going, Annie. Otherwise Johanna
will get impatient." She rang the bell and Roswitha, who was in the
next room, entered immediately. "Roswitha, take Annie over to the
church. Johanna is waiting there. I hope she has not taken cold. I
should be sorry. Remember me to Johanna."

The two went out.

Hardly had Roswitha closed the door behind her when Effi tore open her
dress, because she was threatened with suffocation, and fell to
laughing convulsively. "So that is the way it goes to meet after a
long separation." She rushed forward, opened the window and looked for
something to support her. In the distress of her heart she found it.
There beside the window was a bookshelf with a few volumes of Schiller
and Koerner on it, and on top of the volumes of poems, which were of
equal height, lay a Bible and a songbook. She reached for them,
because she had to have something before which she could kneel down
and pray. She laid both Bible and songbook on the edge of the table
where Annie had been standing, and threw herself violently down before
them and spoke in a half audible tone: "O God in Heaven, forgive me
what I have done. I was a child--No, no, I was not a child, I was old
enough to know what I was doing. I _did_ know, too, and I will not
minimize my guilt. But this is too much. This action of the child is
not the work of my God who would punish me, it is the work of _him_,
and _him_ alone. I thought he had a noble heart and have always felt
small beside him, but now I know that it is he who is small. And
because he is small he is cruel. Everything that is small is cruel.
_He_ taught the child to say that. He always was a school-master,
Crampas called him one, scoffingly at the time, but h