“No, it is not post time yet.”
“If he comes, call me.”
I lay down and shut my eyes. My aunt went out softly. All the people in the house had lately adopted this inaudible walk.
I did not want to sleep, but to be alone with my thoughts. I was in the same room, on the same couch as on that afternoon when Frederick came to tell me “we have got marching orders”. It was just as sultry again as on that day, and again there were roses breathing in a vase near me, and again the trumpet exercise was sounding from the barracks. I could return entirely into the frame of mind of that day. I wished I could go to sleep again in the same way and dream as I then fancied I dreamt—that the door opened gently and my beloved husband entered. The roses were smelling even more powerfully, and through the open window the distant tra-ra-ra was sounding. By degrees my consciousness of present things vanished. I found myself ever more and more transported into that hour; all was forgotten that had happened since, and only the one fixed idea became ever more intense that at any moment the door might open and give my dear one admission. But to this end I had to dream that I was keeping my eyes only half open. It was an effort to force myself to this, but it succeeded. I opened my eyelids ever so little and——
And there it was, the entrancing vision! Frederick, my beloved Frederick, on the threshold. With a loud sob, and covering my face with both hands, I roused myself from my dreamy state. It was clear to me at a stroke that this was only a hallucination, and the heavenly ray of happiness that had been poured round me by this delusion made the hellish night of my misery seem all the blacker to me.
“Oh, my Frederick, my lost one!” I groaned.
“Martha, my wife!”
What was that? A real voice, his own, and real arms that were thrown eagerly round me——
It was no dream. I was lying on my husband’s breast.