Some three weeks after Schrotter’s visit to Hamburg another letter came from Auguste.  He was surprised, he said, that Monsieur le Docteur had not answered, and proceeded to inform him of a new turn in the affair.  They had discovered that Madame la Comtesse injected herself secretly with morphine, pricked herself, Auguste said, and two Sisters of Mercy had to watch her day and night to prevent it.  Schrotter judged it unnecessary to inform Wilhelm of the contents of this letter.

Schrotter’s visit had had an extremely salutary effect on Wilhelm.  His self-torture grew less poignant, the memory of Paris receded into the background, and in proportion as it paled the red returned to his cheeks and the light to his dull eyes.  He still held aloof from the busy turmoil of the world, and was still dominated by a profound consciousness of the aimlessness of his life, and yet, for the first time for years, perhaps since he took his degree, he entertained a desire, a hope, that he might be permitted to return to Berlin.

On the last Sunday in April Wilhelm was spending the afternoon at the Uhlenhorst.  The family were preparing to remove shortly to Friesenmoor, and Paul had gone over to the estate to make some arrangements.  He was expected back in the evening, when they were all to go for a row on the Alster.

Spring was unusually early that year; the trees showed gay sprigs of green already, the air was wonderfully mild and balmy, and in the exhilarating blue of the sky feathery white cloudlets were floating, whose course one was fain to follow with sweet dreams and fancies.  It was a sin to stay indoors on such a lovely afternoon, Malvine declared, and so proposed that they should go out to the terrace overlooking the water and sit there till Paul came home.

The terrace belonged to the villa in the Carlstrasse, laying on the path round the shore which bears with perfect right the name “An der schonen Aussicht”—­the beautiful view—­and was built out in a square into the Alster.  A low stone parapet surrounded it on three sides, the fourth—­that toward the pathway—­being formed by an iron paling with a locked gate in it.  One corner of the terrace, which was otherwise paved with asphalt, was laid out in a round flower bed, in which the primroses and violets were just beginning to come up.  Near the balustrade at the waterside, under a large tentlike umbrella, stood a garden table and a few chairs.  Here Malvine and Wilhelm seated themselves, while Willy played about with Fido.  To the right of the terrace was a narrow little bay where the shallow boat was fastened in which they were to make their pleasure trip later on.  The boat was tied to a wooden landing-place, which inclosed the little bay on the side away from the terrace, and from which a few mossy steps led down to the water.  The Alster was swollen with melting snow and spring rains, and almost washed the foot of the terrace; only one of the steps of the landing appeared above the surface of the water.  Willy, finding it rather dull on the terrace, elected to play on the pier, and began jumping in and out of the boat, into which Fido refused to follow him, as he was afraid of the water.