Laura felt normal again by and by after her own terror of infection had passed. She telephoned each day to the nursing home and sent flowers and little notes.
But as the time passed she found it more and more difficult to find anything to write. She began to feel out of sorts, listless, bitter. She had looked forward to some pleasant weeks at the seaside and now she had to sit here and be baked at the Grand Hotel in the midst of the summer heat and the dead season.
That Count Alexis should immediately fall ill was not a part of the marriage contract.
Laura consoled herself as far as possible with Georg. During her long stay abroad he had been boarded out in the family of a bank cashier. There he had a tiny room about as big as a wardrobe, which just held his bed and school books. The cashier and his wife were cold, silent, nervous people who made a face if you talked aloud or banged the door, but who otherwise left Georg completely alone. Nobody during the last two years had asked how he was doing at school. But this very forlornness had awakened in him a defiant ambition that had kept him up to the mark.
Now he moved to his mother at the hotel and they had their meals in the big dining-room. It was an immense change. Laura had to force him to help himself to the fine food. He writhed on his chair and it looked as if he were eating with a bad conscience.
Laura stayed in bed late in the mornings. Usually she heard no sound from Georg until he came home breathless for lunch. He had been out for a walk, he said. Laura became curious. One morning she awoke early, at eight o’clock, and stole into Georg’s room. It was empty. And he did not return before twelve. When his mother pressed him with questions, he suddenly looked her straight in the eyes and answered vehemently that he had been at Ekbacken....
Laura smiled a tart little smile and pulled together her kimono which had opened and showed her silk stockings:
“Oh! are you so mad on boats?” she said.
The following day whilst Laura still lay in bed the telephone on her night table rang. It was from the nursing home. The nurse who spoke sounded very serious. The Count was worse and incessantly expressed his wish that the Countess should come to see him.
Laura felt a violent discomfort. She grew cold all over. The thought of the nursing home made her sick. She had not yet been there. She was afraid, mortally afraid of long corridors, temperature curves, the smell of disinfectants, groans, biers. Every fibre of her body shrank back from the serious danger of infection and the nearness of death. But all of a sudden she felt relief, a wonderful relief. Georg! Yes Georg would probably go! With trembling fingers she seized the receiver again: