“And then your Ladyship doesn’t need to worry about me, as though I might think:  ‘that is not good enough for Roswitha.’  For Roswitha anything is good that she has to share with your Ladyship, and most to her liking would be something sad.  Yes, I look forward to that with real pleasure.  Your Ladyship shall see I know what sadness is.  Even if I didn’t know, I should soon find out.  I have not forgotten how I was sitting there in the churchyard, all alone in the world, thinking to myself it would probably be better if I were lying there in a row with the others.  Who came along?  Who saved my life?  Oh, I have had so much to endure.  That day when my father came at me with the red-hot tongs—­”

“I remember, Roswitha.”

“Well, that was bad enough.  But when I sat there in the churchyard, so completely poverty stricken and forsaken, that was worse still.  Then your Ladyship came.  I hope I shall never go to heaven if I forget that.”

As she said this she arose and went toward the window.  “Oh, your Ladyship must see him too.”

Effi stepped to the window.  Over on the other side of the street sat Rollo, looking up at the windows of the boarding house.

A few days later Effi, with the aid of Roswitha, moved into the apartment on Koeniggraetz St., and liked it there from the beginning.  To be sure, there was no society, but during her boarding house days she had derived so little pleasure from intercourse with people that it was not hard for her to be alone, at least not in the beginning.  With Roswitha it was impossible, of course, to carry on an esthetic conversation, or even to discuss what was in the paper, but when it was simply a question of things human and Effi began her sentence with, “Oh, Roswitha, I am again afraid,” then the faithful soul always had a good answer ready, always comfort and usually advice.

Until Christmas they got on excellently, but Christmas eve was rather sad and when New Year’s Day came Effi began to grow quite melancholy.  It was not cold, only grizzly and rainy, and if the days were short, the evenings were so much the longer.  What was she to do!  She read, she embroidered, she played solitaire, she played Chopin, but nocturnes were not calculated to bring much light into her life, and when Roswitha came with the tea tray and placed on the table, beside the tea service, two small plates with an egg and a Vienna cutlet carved in small slices, Effi said, as she closed the piano:  “Move up, Roswitha.  Keep me company.”

Roswitha joined her.  “I know, your Ladyship has been playing too much again.  Your Ladyship always looks like that and has red spots.  The doctor forbade it, didn’t he?”

“Ah, Roswitha, it is easy for the doctor to forbid, and also easy for you to repeat everything he says.  But what shall I do?  I can’t sit all day long at the window and look over toward Christ’s Church.  Sundays, during the evening service, when the windows are lighted up, I always look over that way; but it does me no good, it always makes my heart feel heavier.”