Toward five o’clock Daniel went to his bedroom. He saw Dorothea standing before the mirror in her new dress. It was a tall, narrow mirror on a console. Dorothea had received it from her father as a wedding present.
“What is the matter with her?” thought Daniel, on noticing her complete lack of excitement. She was as if lost in the reflection of herself in the mirror. There was something rigid, drawn, transported about her eyes. She did not see that Daniel was standing in the room. When she raised her arm and turned her head, it was to enjoy these gestures in the mirror.
“Dorothea!” said Daniel gently.
She started, looked at him thoughtfully, and smiled a heady smile.
Daniel was anxious, apprehensive.
V
“I am related to Daniel, and we must address each other by the familiar Du,” said Philippina to Dorothea. Daniel’s wife agreed.
Every morning when Dorothea came into the kitchen Philippina would say: “Well, what did you dream?”
“I dreamt I was at the station and it was wartime, and some gipsies came along and carried me off,” said Dorothea on one occasion.
“Station means an unexpected visit; war means discord with various personalities; and gipsies mean that you are going to have to do with some flippant people.” All this Philippina rattled off in the High German of her secret code.