"You won't lose the little figure?" and Frau Stacher with that formidable submission in her eyes, even Irma got it, answered again:
"No, I'll be very careful." Then she turned and inexplicably to herself embraced Irma and said, "Farewell" just as if she didn't expect to be back in a few hours. Irma heard her steps getting fainter and fainter, as she went down the resounding stairway, until they were lost forever.
Frau Stacher felt very weak, and her feet seemed made of lead, as she turned into the Rotenthurm Street, then that pain between her shoulders. But she was thankful that she had been able to get out and Fanny, mercifully, lived near. A pale, uncertain sun that gave no warmth, lay momentarily over the city.
There was an undeniable excitement about going to Fanny's, something adventurous, like going into exotic lands, that stimulated her momentarily and in that sick confusion of her being she did not try to analyze her varied and commingled sentiments. Bashfulness, timidity, the gentlest curiosity, gratitude, affection, she was conscious of,—together with that increasing pain between her shoulders....
She was admitted by Maria whose small black eyes were snapping pleasantly, whose wide mouth wore the most affectionate of smiles; Maria, part of their lives since twenty-five years, Maria, who had always opened to her ring when she went to see her brother.
"Ach, dear, gracious lady, how good of you to come to us!" she cried warmly and bending kissed Frau Stacher's hand with all the old time reverence and affection.
She felt like a storm-tossed little craft that has at last made port. She hadn't thought it would be that way. It was, indeed, "just like any other place, only much nicer."
"Fanny is making her toilette, I'm just getting her into her things," Maria continued easily.
"I'll be there in a minute, Tante Ilde, dear," called another welcoming voice from the next room, then in quite a different tone: