—I have two hands, and upon each of them five fingers. My sickness, the harsh four years since Jonathan, have wasted my flesh. Yet it is somehow sweet. My hair is not the verdant hedge it was, it is a little stringy, a little limp. But still black. My eyes have fire at times. I am thirty-five ... and I am real, Fanny Luve!
They felt that she felt them clear. Clara above all. The women above all. Her feeling them clear at last was a bridge to them. Their will, long champing on the brink of their division, moved on her own.
Already they had spoken of details of their dream to Mark Pfennig, to Statt, to Mangel.
“We will take a House. And you will take care of us, Fanny!”
“And make us behave.”
“And make the men behave.”
“And bring God with you?” whispered Clara low....
They sat at her feet that evening after the magic dusk of a hard city melting to Spring: they were in Clara’s bedroom.
From her chair, Fanny touched them: her fingers in their hair: her skirt fringing their arms and their faces.
“It’s all arranged, Fanny dear.”