"'Why the devil is she so unreasonable, too, as to fret about her brother's marriage?' he continued, undisturbed. No gray hair need be made grow over that. Take the young lady, pack her trunk, and go to Berlin for a few weeks. Go to the theatre every evening for my sake, and see something classical; but take her away from here!'
"'Ah, doctor, you do not know Anna Maria.'
"I made an attempt, nevertheless. She let me have my say, and then said: 'I do not understand the outside world at all. I miss nothing here, I complain of nothing. Do not tease me any more!'
"When the workmen appeared, one after another, to put in order the rooms for the young couple, when the dear old articles of furniture were taken out and the wall-papers torn off, she fled to her room. The writing-desk at which her father had formerly sat and worked was to remain in its place, at Klaus's express desire; but the old thing looked so ridiculously awkward beside the Boule furniture that paper-hanger and cabinet-maker refused to receive it, so Anna Maria had it taken into her room. She now sat there all day at the window before her mother's sewing-table, and looked blankly out on the wintry garden, every stroke of the hammer from the workmen making her start. The bunch of keys no longer hung at her belt; Brockelmann had taken charge of that.
"No one came to see us in those desolate winter days, except the old brother and sister from the parsonage, and even from them she fled. I stood by her faithfully, and beheld the struggles of her proud heart.
"At first Isa had lived on quietly up-stairs by herself, disregarded by Anna Maria. Then one day toward Christmas she came into my room, beaming with joy, and announced to me that the young Frau wanted her to come to her; she was in need of her help at her toilet, and she was to have the position of lady's maid with her. 'Je vais à Paris ce soir, à Paris, and from there to Nice. Oh, I speak French excellently!'
"I wished her a prosperous journey, and commissioned her with messages. Then I sat down and reflected. Klaus, quiet, easy-going Klaus, who valued the comfort of his arm-chair in the evening beyond everything, in Paris, the gay Paris, with a young wife who needed a maid to make her toilet? I could not make that rhyme without a dissonance.
"In the rooms down-stairs an exquisite elegance was being gradually revealed, and I learned from the workmen that the pale blue silk hangings of the boudoir (the little library next to Klaus's study was converted into a boudoir), and the dainty rosewood furniture, Frau von Hegewitz had chosen herself in Berlin; that the crimson silk drapery for the salon cost ten thaler a yard, and that the Smyrna rug in there was real. Tears came into my eyes. What had become of our dear old, comfortable sitting-room? What had we ever known of salons and boudoirs at Bütze?
"As in passing through the garden-parlor one day Anna Maria's feet sank in a Persian rug, and she perceived the low divans which ran along the sides of the room, and the gold-embroidered cushions; and as she caught sight of a gleaming, gay mosaic floor on the terrace instead of the honest stone flags over which her childish feet had so often tripped, on which she had stood so many a time beside Klaus; and saw, instead of the gray stone balustrade, a gilded railing, a slight tremble came upon her lips, and a few great tear-drops ran down her cheeks, and she slowly turned her back to the room. She always went to the garden through the lower entry afterward.
"It was on a stormy evening in March that Anna Maria for the first time broke her long, habitually sober silence. I had not seen her all day; her door remained closed to my knocking. And yet I would have so gladly said a few affectionate words to her—to-day was her birthday.