9
Miriam could not remember hearing Fräulein Pfaff go away when she woke in the darkness feeling unendurably oppressed. She flung her sheet aside and turned her pillow over and pushed her frilled sleeves to her elbows. How energetic I am, she thought and lay tranquil. There was not a sound. “I shall never be able to sleep down here, it’s too awful,” she murmured, and puffed and shifted her head on the pillow.
The win-ter may—pass.... The win-ter ... may pass. The winter may ... pass. The Academy ... a picture in very bright colours ... a woman sitting by the roadside with a shawl round her shoulders and a red skirt and red cheeks and bright green country behind her ... people moving about on the shiny floor, someone just behind saying, “that is plein-air, these are the plein-airistes”—the woman in the picture was like the housekeeper....
A brilliant light flashed into the room ... lightning—how strange the room looked—the screens had been moved—the walls and corners and little beds had looked like daylight. Someone was talking across the landing. Emma was awake. Another flash came and movements and cries. Emma screamed aloud, sitting up in bed. “Ach Gott! Clara! Clara!” she screamed. Cries came from the next room. A match was struck across the landing and voices sounded. Gertrude was in the room lighting the gas and Clara tugging down the blind. Emma was sitting with her hands pressed to her eyes, quickly gasping, “Ach Clara! Mein Gott! Ach Gott!” On Ulrica’s bed nothing was visible but a mound of bedclothes. The whole landing was astir. Fräulein’s voice called up urgently from below.