Her rooms were in the upper story on the side toward the garden.  In the smaller one Roswitha was sleeping with Annie and their door was standing ajar.  She herself walked to and fro in the larger one, which she occupied.  The lower casements of the windows were open and the little white curtains were blown by the draft and slowly fell over the back of the chair, till another puff of wind came and raised them again.  It was so light that she could read plainly the titles of the pictures hanging in narrow gilt frames over the sofa:  “The Storming of Dueppel, Fort No. 5,” and “King William and Count Bismarck on the Heights of Lipa.”  Effi shook her head and smiled.  “When I come back again I am going to ask for different pictures; I don’t like such warlike sights.”  Then she closed one window and sat down by the other, which she left open.  How she enjoyed the whole scene!  Almost behind the church tower was the moon, which shed its light upon the grassy plot with the sundial and the heliotrope beds.  Everything was covered with a silvery sheen.  Beside the strips of shadow lay white strips of light, as white as linen on the bleaching ground.  Farther on stood the tall rhubarb plants with their leaves an autumnal yellow, and she thought of the day, only a little over two years before, when she had played there with Hulda and the Jahnke girls.  On that occasion, when the visitor came she ascended the little stone steps by the bench and an hour later was betrothed.

She arose, went toward the door, and listened.  Roswitha was asleep and Annie also.

Suddenly, as the child lay there before her, a throng of pictures of the days in Kessin came back to her unbidden.  There was the district councillor’s dwelling with its gable, and the veranda with the view of the “Plantation,” and she was sitting in the rocking chair, rocking.  Soon Crampas stepped up to her to greet her, and then came Roswitha with the child, and she took it, held it up, and kissed it.

“That was the first day, there is where it began.”  In the midst of her revery she left the room the two were sleeping in and sat down again at the open window and gazed out into the quiet night.

“I cannot get rid of it,” she said.  “But worst of all, and the thing that makes me lose faith in myself—­” Just then the tower clock began to strike and Effi counted the strokes.  “Ten—­Tomorrow at this time I shall be in Berlin.  We shall speak about our wedding anniversary and he will say pleasing and friendly things to me and perhaps words of affection.  I shall sit there and listen and have a sense of guilt in my heart.”  She leaned her head upon her hand and stared silently into the night.