old elms and then, where the turnpike began, with poplars.  This road led to the railway station about an hour’s walk away.  She enjoyed everything, breathing in with delight the fragrance wafted to her from the rape and clover fields, or watching the soaring of the larks, and counting the draw-wells and troughs, to which the cattle went to drink.  She could hear a soft ringing of bells that made her feel as though she must close her eyes and pass away in sweet forgetfulness.  Near the station, close by the turnpike, lay a road roller.  This was her daily resting place, from which she could observe what took place on the railroad.  Trains came and went and sometimes she could see two columns of smoke which for a moment seemed to blend into one and then separated, one going to the right, the other to the left, till they disappeared behind the village and the grove.  Rollo sat beside her, sharing her lunch, and when he had caught the last bite, he would run like mad along some plowed furrow, doubtless to show his gratitude, and stop only when a pair of pheasants scared from their nest flew up from a neighboring furrow close by him.

“How beautiful this summer is!  A year ago, dear mama, I should not have thought I could ever again be so happy,” said Effi every day as she walked with her mother around the pond or picked an early apple from a tree and bit into it vigorously, for she had beautiful teeth.  Mrs. von Briest would stroke her hand and say:  “Just wait till you are well again, Effi, quite well, and then we shall find happiness, not that of the past, but a new kind.  Thank God, there are several kinds of happiness.  And you shall see, we shall find something for you.”

“You are so good.  Really I have changed your lives and made you prematurely old.”

“Oh, my dear Effi, don’t speak of it.  I thought the same about it, when the change came.  Now I know that our quiet is better than the noise and loud turmoil of earlier years.  If you keep on as you are we can go away yet.  When Wiesike proposed Mentone you were ill and irritable, and because you were ill, you were right in saying what you did about conductors and waiters.  When you have steadier nerves again you can stand that.  You will no longer be offended, but will laugh at the grand manners and the curled hair.  Then the blue sea and white sails and the rocks all overgrown with red cactus—­I have never seen them, to be sure, but that is how I imagine them.  I should like to become acquainted with them.”

Thus the summer went by and the meteoric showers were also past.  During these evenings Effi had sat at her window till after midnight and yet never grew tired of watching.  “I always was a weak Christian, but I wonder whether we ever came from up there and whether, when all is over here, we shall return to our heavenly home, to the stars above or further beyond.  I don’t know and don’t care to know.  I just have the longing.”

Poor Effi!  She had looked up at the wonders of the sky and thought about them too long, with the result that the night air, and the fog rising from the pond, made her so ill she had to stay in bed again.  When Wiesike was summoned and had examined her he took Briest aside and said:  “No more hope; be prepared for an early end.”