Out of doors the autumn evening fell sadly. On the window panes of the sunshine room raindrops ran down like tears on a transparent grey face.
Silence reigned in the deserted old nursery. Since Christopher’s departure Anne had been very lonely. She would often rise from the work table during the afternoon and go quietly to the door. She opened it quickly, nobody was there. She looked down into the depths of the staircase. The house was silent. She decided to count up to a hundred, then wait no longer. Twice she counted up to a hundred, and even after that she looked back from the threshold.
At night when Netti lit the lamp and Florian bolted the front door, Anne’s eyes more than once filled with tears. She felt a prisoner. Life remained outside the walls of her prison. Again a useless day had drawn to an end, that at its dawning had promised so generously. It tortured her artfully while it lasted, and in the end achieved nothing.
Thomas Illey came no more.
Anne’s little face became quite pale and thin. She began to be afraid. Perhaps Illey went to someone else now, perhaps he was angry? The last time he saw her he asked her so earnestly to go the next day to the Danube pier. And she could not go, could send no message, could not write. Christopher had to leave and their father was very strict with both of them.
“Why does he not come? Where is he?”
She pressed her face against the window pane. Whenever the front door bell rang the blood rushed to her heart. She waited, then hung her head wearily.
In the sunshine room the furniture began to whisper. The walls too remembered. The door handle was familiar with Thomas’s hand. The shaded lamp, the clock under the glass globe, they all told her that they had seen him many times.
Anne turned her face away. The memories wounded her. She clasped her hands in prayer for respite from her tortures.
Hours passed. Tini came in and started to read her fortune with cards. “All your sorrows will come to an end, my little dove,” she said when she finished her game.