Schloss Sielenburg,
Moravia.
This letter the major registered and mailed without letting Franka know anything about it, because in these first days she was so dazed that she really did not hear what was said to her.
It so happened that the major and his wife moved from Vienna to Graz, and Franka was now really alone. She realized that she was obliged to devise some means of earning her livelihood, and yet she had been putting off from day to day the effort of taking the first steps in this direction. The money in the bank was sufficient to allow her for a short time to lead her own life. But this respite was, indeed, brief, especially as the rent would be shortly due.
Franka was not thinking of this at all as she lay there in the twilight and gave herself up to the sense of restfulness that was coming over her. Gradually this absence of thought, between sleeping and waking, transformed itself into a pleasant half-dream. The waltz-rhythms from the neighbor’s piano grew into a murmurous combination of organ tones and the distant roaring of the sea; the gleam of light from the printing-house opposite took on the prismatic colors of an electric fountain; and through her mind—or was it through her blood?—vividly flashed the consciousness, not expressed and not even formulated in thought:—“I am young, I am beautiful, I am alive....”
The next day Franka set out to look for a position. She thought she might become a companion or a reader or something of that sort. She applied at several employment bureaus. Her name was registered, the booking-fee was put into the cash-drawer, and then she was asked for references. She had none. The woman who had charge of one bureau remarked: “You have one great fault: you are too young and too pretty.”
The remark was to the point. Although she was more than twenty, Franka seemed scarcely eighteen. She was very tall and supple in figure; her big black eyes—though much weeping had temporarily robbed them of their usual fire—were shaded by beautiful thick lashes; her mouth had a fairly fascinating loveliness; in her carriage and in every movement there was something both charming and aristocratic.
“Do you know, miss,” said the manageress, “you would do better to go on the stage rather than try to find a position.”
Franka shook her head: “For that one needs talent as well as special training.”
“You might attend a theatrical training-school.”