"Lena."
"Your Lena," said he, repeating the signature, once more to himself and a sort of restlessness took possession of him, because all kinds of conflicting emotions passed through his heart: love, anxiety, fear. Then he read the letter through again. At two or three passages he could not forbear to make a little mark with his silver pencil, not through pedantry, but through pure delight. "How well she writes! The handwriting certainly, and the spelling almost ... Stiehl instead of Stiel.... Well, why not? Stiehl was a much dreaded school inspector, but the Lord be praised, I am not. And 'emphelen.' Shall I be put out with her over f and h? Good Lord, how many people can spell 'empfehlen' properly? The young Countesses cannot always, and the old ones never. So where is the harm! Really, the letter is like Lena herself, good, true and trustworthy, and the mistakes make it only the more charming."
He leaned back in his chair and covered his eyes and brow with his hand: "Poor Lena, what is to come of all this? It would have been better for us both, if there had been no Easter Monday this time. Why indeed should there be two holidays? Why Treptow and Stralau and boating excursions? And now my Uncle! Either he is coming as a messenger from my mother, or else he has plans for me himself, of his own initiative. Well, we shall see. He has never been through any training in diplomatic disguises, and even if he has sworn ten oaths to keep silence, he comes out with everything. I shall soon find out, for all that I am even less experienced than he in the art of intrigue."
Thereupon he pulled out a drawer of his writing table, in which there were already other letters of Lena's, tied up with a red ribbon. And now he rang for the servant to help him to dress. "So, John, that is all I need.... And now don't forget to draw the blinds down. And if anyone should come and ask for me, I shall be at the barracks till twelve, at Hiller's after one and at Renz's in the evening. And be sure to raise the blinds again at the right time, so that I shall not find a bake-oven again. And leave the lamp lighted in the front room, but not in my bedroom; it seems as if the flies are possessed this year. Do you understand?"
"Very good, Herr Baron."
And during this dialogue, which was half carried on in the corridor, Rienäcker passed through the vestibule, and out in the garden he playfully pulled the braids of the porter's little girl, who was stooping over her little brother's wagon, and got in return a furious glance, which changed to one of delight as soon as she recognized him.
And now at last he stepped through the gate to the street. Here he saw beneath the green bower of the chestnut trees the men and vehicles passing silently to and fro between the great gate and the Zoological Garden, as if through the glass of a camera. "How beautiful! This is surely one of the best of worlds."
[CHAPTER VII]
Towards twelve his service at the barracks being over, Botho von Rienäcker was walking along under the Lindens toward the Gate, simply with the intention of filling up the time as well as he could until his interview at Hiller's. Two or three picture shops were very welcome to him in this interim. At Lepke's there were a couple of Oswald Achenbach's in the show window, among them a street in Palermo, dirty and sunny, and strikingly truthful as to life and color. "There are things, then, about which one is never quite clear. So it is with these Achenbach's. Until recently I always swore by Andreas; but when I see something like this, I do not know that Oswald is not his equal or his superior. In any case he is more brilliant and varied. But such things as this I can only think to myself, for to say them before people would be to lower the value of my 'Storm at Sea' by half, and quite unnecessarily."
Thinking of these matters he stood for a time before Lepke's show window and then walked across the Parisian Square to the Gate and the path turning sharply to the left toward the Zoological Garden, until he paused before Wolf's group of lions. Here he looked at the clock. "Half past twelve. Then it is time." And so he turned and went back over the same path towards the Lindens.