eautiful this summer is! A year ago, dear mama, I should not
have thought I could ever again be so happy," said Effi every day as
she walked with her mother around the pond or picked an early apple
from a tree and bit into it vigorously, for she had beautiful teeth.
Mrs. von Briest would stroke her hand and say: "Just wait till you are
well again, Effi, quite well, and then we shall find happiness, not
that of the past, but a new kind. Thank God, there are several kinds
of happiness. And you shall see, we shall find something for you."

"You are so good. Really I have changed your lives and made you
prematurely old."

"Oh, my dear Effi, don't speak of it. I thought the same about it,
when the change came. Now I know that our quiet is better than the
noise and loud turmoil of earlier years. If you keep on as you are we
can go away yet. When Wiesike proposed Mentone you were ill and
irritable, and because you were ill, you were right in saying what you
did about conductors and waiters. When you have steadier nerves again
you can stand that. You will no longer be offended, but will laugh at
the grand manners and the curled hair. Then the blue sea and white
sails and the rocks all overgrown with red cactus--I have never seen
them, to be sure, but that is how I imagine them. I should like to
become acquainted with them."

Thus the summer went by and the meteoric showers were also past.
During these evenings Effi had sat at her window till after midnight
and yet never grew tired of watching. "I always was a weak Christian,
but I wonder whether we ever came from up there and whether, when all
is over here, we shall return to our heavenly home, to the stars above
or further beyond. I don't know and don't care to know. I just have
the longing."

Poor Effi! She had looked up at the wonders of the sky and thought
about them too long, with the result that the night air, and the fog
rising from the pond, made her so ill she had to stay in bed again.
When Wiesike was summoned and had examined her he took Briest aside
and said: "No more hope; be prepared for an early end."

What he said was only too true, and a few days later, comparatively
early in the evening, it was not yet ten o'clock, Roswitha came down
stairs and said to Mrs. von Briest: "Most gracious Lady, her Ladyship
upstairs is very ill. She talks continually to herself in a soft voice
and sometimes it seems as though she were praying, but she says she is
not, and I d