When a few minutes later the landau passed out of the great iron gate she put her head out of the window. He stood on the steps looking after her. As she turned he took off his hat and waved it.
How handsome he was, how stately and how good!
She leaned back on the cushions. She felt a vague alarm--it was the first time she had left the house without him. Strange thoughts came over her--how dreadful it would be if she should not find him again, or even--if she should lose him utterly. Could she go on living then? Live--yes--but how?
It would be frightful to be a widow! Still more frightful if they were to part--one here, the other there, hating each other, or indifferent!
Could Arthur and Jenny, really--? Oh, God in Heaven preserve us from such woe!
She looked out of the window. The coachman was driving at a dizzy pace. There lay the city before her in the mist. Again her thoughts wandered, faster than the horses went. She took the note-book out of her pocket to read the verses, but the letters danced before her eyes, and she put it away again.
In the attic at home stood the old cradle in which her father had been rocked, and Jenny, and she herself. The grandmother in the narrow street had had it as part of her outfit. She would get it out for herself if God should ever fulfil her wish. Jenny's darling had lain in another bed, the clumsy old cradle did not seem suitable in the elegant chamber of the young mother, but in the modest room at Niendorf, where the vines crept about the windows and the big old stove looked so cosy and comfortable, it would be quite in place, just between the stove and the wardrobe in a cosy corner by itself. She smiled like a happy child. She could not believe that her life could be so beautiful, so rich.
The carriage was now rattling through the city gate; she would be at home in a minute now, and her heart began to beat loudly. If she only knew what it was.
The porter opened the carriage door and she got out and ran up the stairs to Jenny's apartment. The entrance door of her mother's apartment stood open. No one was to be seen and she entered the hall. How dear and familiar everything looked! Even the tall clock lifted up its voice, and struck the quarter before two. She took off her cloak and went to her mother's room. Here, too, the door was ajar. Just as she was going to enter she suddenly drew back her hand.
"And I tell you, Ottilie, it will be the worst act of your life, if you fling all this in the child's face without the slightest preparation. Whether it is true or false why should you destroy her young happiness? There are other ways and means."