She held her hand over his mouth and pushed back her veil, which had fallen half over her face, and directly afterwards they passed the Potsdam railway viaduct, over the iron framework of which an express train was just rushing. It made both a thundering and a trembling and when they had left the bridge behind, Katherine said: "It is always disagreeable to me to be directly under it."
"But it is no better for those who are up there."
"Perhaps not. But it is all in the idea. Ideas always have so much influence. Don't you think so too?" And she sighed, as if some dreadful thing that had taken a terrible hold upon her life had suddenly come before her mind. But then she went on: "In England, so Mr. Armstrong, an acquaintance at the baths, told me (I must tell you more about him, besides he married an Alvensleben)--in England, he said, they bury the dead fifteen feet deep. Now fifteen feet deep is no worse than five feet, but I felt distinctly, while he was telling me about it, how the clay, for that is the correct English word, must weigh like a ton on the breast. For in England they have a very heavy clay soil."
"Did you say Armstrong.... There was an Armstrong in the Baden Dragoons."
"A cousin of his. They are all cousins, the same as with us. I am glad that I can describe him to you with all his little peculiarities. A regular cavalier with his mustache turned up, and he really went a little too far with that. He looked very comical, with those twisted ends, which he was always twisting more."
In about ten minutes the carriage drew up before the door and Botho gave her his arm and led her in. A garland hung over the large door of the corridor and a tablet with the inscription "Willkommen" ("Welcome"), from which, alas, one "l" was wanting, hung somewhat crookedly from the garland. Katherine looked up, read it and laughed.
"Willkommen! But only with one 'l,' that is to say, only half. Dear me. An 'L' is the letter for Love, too. Well then, you too shall have only half of everything."
And so she walked through the door into the corridor, where the cook and housemaid were already standing waiting to kiss her hand.
"Good day, Bertha; good day, Minette. Yes, children, here I am again. Well, how do you think I look? Have I improved?" And before the maids could answer, which indeed she was not expecting, she went on: "But you have both improved. Especially you, Minette, you have really grown quite stout."
Minette was embarrassed and looked straight before her, and Katherine added good-naturedly: "I mean only here around your chin and neck."