Your Chris.
Koseritz, Sunday evening, July 19, 1914.
My own darling mother,
I don't know what you'll say, but I'm engaged to Bernd. That's Herr von Inster. You know his name is Bernd? I don't know what to say to it myself. I can't quite believe it. This time last night I was writing to you in this very room, with no thought of anything in the world but just ordinary happiness with kind friends and one specially kind and understanding friend, and here I am twenty-four hours later done with ordinary happiness, taken into my lover's heart for ever.
It was so strange. I don't believe any girl ever got engaged in quite that way before. I'm sure everybody thinks we're insane, except Kloster. Kloster doesn't. He understands.
It was after supper. Only three hours ago. I wonder if it wasn't a dream. We were all on the terrace, as we were last night. The Klosters had come early in the afternoon. There wasn't a leaf stirring, and not a sound except that lapping water against the bottom of the wall where the larkspurs are. You know how sometimes when everybody has been talking together without stopping there's a sudden hush. That happened to-night, and after what seemed a long while of silence the Grafin said to Kloster, "I suppose, Master, it would be too much to ask you to play to us?"
"Here?" he said. "Out here?"
"Why not?" she said.
I hung breathless on what he would say. Suppose he played, out there in the dusk, with the stars and the water and the forest all round us, what would it be like?
He got up without a word and went indoors.