“So early?”

“So early, you say.  Of course, to mock me.”

Innstetten shook his head.  “How can I?” Effi took pleasure in accusing herself, however, and refused to listen to the assurances of her husband that his “so early” had been meant in all seriousness.  “You must know from our journey that I have never kept you waiting in the morning.  In the course of the day—­well, that is a different matter.  It is true, I am not very punctual, but I am not a late sleeper.  In that respect my parents have given me good training, I think.”

“In that respect?  In everything, my sweet Effi.”

“You say that just because we are still on our honeymoon,—­why no, we are past that already.  For heaven’s sake, Geert, I hadn’t given it a single thought, and—­why, we have been married for over six weeks, six weeks and a day.  Yes, that alters the case.  So I shall not take it as flattery, I shall take it as the truth.”

At this moment Frederick came in and brought the coffee.  The breakfast table stood across the corner of the sitting room in front of a sofa made just in the right shape and size to fill that corner.  They both sat down upon the sofa.

“The coffee is simply delicious,” said Effi, as she looked at the room and its furnishings.  “This is as good as hotel coffee or that we had at Bottegone’s—­you remember, don’t you, in Florence, with the view of the cathedral?  I must write mama about it.  We don’t have such coffee in Hohen-Cremmen.  On the whole, Geert, I am just beginning to realize what a distinguished husband I married.  In our home everything was just barely passable.”

“Nonsense, Effi.  I never saw better house-keeping than in your home.”

“And then how well your house is furnished.  When papa had bought his new weapon cabinet and hung above his writing desk the head of a buffalo, and beneath that a picture of old general Wrangel, under whom he had once served as an adjutant, he was very proud of what he had done.  But when I see these things here, all our Hohen-Cremmen elegance seems by the side of them merely commonplace and meagre.  I don’t know what to compare them with.  Even last night, when I took but a cursory look at them, a world of ideas occurred to me.”

“And what were they, if I may ask?”

“What they were?  Certainly.  But you must not laugh at them.  I once had a picture book, in which a Persian or Indian prince (for he wore a turban) sat with his feet under him on a silk cushion, and at his back there was a great red silk bolster, which could be seen bulging out to the right and left of him, and the wall behind the Indian prince bristled with swords and daggers and panther skins and shields and long Turkish guns.  And see, it looks just like that here in your house, and if you will cross your legs and sit down on them the similarity will be complete.”

“Effi, you are a charming, dear creature.  You don’t know how deeply I feel that and how much I should like to show you every moment that I do feel it.”