Eva had flushed very dark. Now she became very pale. “It is a lie,” she said.
Susan’s voice was quite dry. “It is the truth. Ask her. I don’t think she’ll deny it.”
Shortly thereafter Johanna slipped into the room. She had on a dress of simple, black velvet which set off her figure charmingly. Eva sat before the mirror. Susan was arranging her hair. She had a book in her hand and read without looking up.
On a chair near the dressing-table lay an open jewel case. Johanna stood before it, smiled timidly, and took out of it a beautifully cut cameo, which she playfully fastened to her bosom; she looked admiringly at a diadem and put it in her hair; she slipped on a few rings and a pearl bracelet over her sleeve. Thus adorned she went, half hesitatingly, half with an air of self-mockery, up to Eva.
Slowly Eva lifted her eyes from the book, looked at Johanna, and asked: “Is it true?” She let a few seconds pass, and then with wider open eyes she asked once more: “Is it true?”
Johanna drew back, and the colour left her cheeks. She suspected and knew and began to tremble.
Then Eva arose and went close up to her and stripped the cameo from the girl’s bosom, the diadem from her hair, the rings from her fingers, the bracelet from her arm, and threw the things back into the case. Then she sat down again, took up her book, and said: “Hurry, Susan! I want to rest a little.”
Johanna’s breath failed her. She looked like one who has been struck. A tender blossom in her heart was crushed forever, and from its sudden withering arose a subtle miasma. Almost on the point of fainting she left the room.
As though to seal the end of a period in her life and warn her of evil things to come, she received within two hours a telegram from her mother which informed her of a catastrophe and urgently summoned her home. Fräulein Grabmeier began packing at once. They were to catch the train at five o’clock in the morning.