“That very statement should have put us on our guard,” she remarked.
“On our guard? Against what?” I asked, unsuspectingly.
“Oh, nothing—nothing! I wonder when he will return! I would give a world to be in England!” she said, with a heartsick sigh; and I, feeling very much bewildered, left her.
In the afternoon, despite wind and weather, I sallied forth, and took my way to my old lodgings in the Wehrhahn. Crossing a square leading to the street I was going to, I met Anna Sartorius. She bowed, looking at me mockingly. I returned her salutation, and remembered last night again with painful distinctness. The air seemed full of mysteries and uncertainties; they clung about my mind like cobwebs, and I could not get rid of their soft, stifling influence.
Having arrived at my lodgings, I mounted the stairs. Frau Lutzler met me.
“Na, na, Fräulein! You do not patronize me much now. My rooms are becoming too small for you, I reckon.”
“Indeed, Frau Lutzler, I wish I had never been in any larger ones,” I answered her, earnestly.
“So! Well, ’tis true you look thin and worn—not as well as you used to. And were you—but I heard you were, so where’s the use of telling lies about it—at the Maskenball last night? And how did you like it?”
“Oh, it was all very new to me. I never was at one before.”
“Nicht? Then you must have been astonished. They say there was a Mephisto so good he would have deceived the devil himself. And you, Fräulein—I heard that you looked very beautiful.”