The atmosphere in this house really is intolerable, and I’m going back to Frau Berg’s tomorrow morning.  I’ve settled it with her by telephone, and I can have my old room.  However lonely I am in it without my lessons and Kloster, without the reason there was for being there before, I won’t have this horrid feeling of being in a place full of sudden and unaccountable hostility.  Bernd came this morning, and the Grafin told him I was out, and he went away again.  She couldn’t have thought I was out, for I always tell her when I’m going, so she wants to separate us.  But why?  Why?  And oh, it means so much to me to see him, it was so cruel to find out by accident that he had been!  A woman who was at lunch happened to say she had met him coming out of the front door as she came in.

“What—­was Bernd here?” I exclaimed, half getting up on a sort of impulse to run after him and try and catch him in the street.

“Helena thought you had gone out,” said the Grafin.

“But you knew I hadn’t,” I said, turning on Helena.

“Helena knew nothing of the sort,” said the Grafin severely.  “She said what she believed to be true.  I must request you, Christine, not to cast doubts on her word.  We Germans do not lie.”

And the Graf muttered, “Peinlich, peinlich” and pushed hack his chair and left the room.

“You have spoilt my husband’s lunch,” said the Grafin sternly.

“I am very sorry,” I said; and tried to go on with my own, but couldn’t see it because I was blinded by tears.

After this there was nothing for it but Frau Berg.  I waited till the Grafin was alone, and then went and told her I thought it better I should go back to the Lutzowstrasse, and would like, if she didn’t mind, to go tomorrow.  It was very peinlich, as they say; for however much people want to get rid of you they’re always angry if you want to go.  I said all I could that was grateful, and there was quite a lot I could say by blotting out the last two days from my remembrance.  I did, being greatly at sea and perplexed, ask what it was that I had done to offend her; though of course she didn’t tell me, and was only still more offended at being asked.

I’m going to pack now, and write a letter to Bernd telling him about it, in case Helena should have a second unfortunate conviction that I’m not at home when he comes next.  And I do try to be cheerful, little mother, and keep my soul from getting hurt, and when I’m at Frau Berg’s I shall feel more normal again I expect.  But one has such fears—­oh, more than just fears, terrors—­Well, I won’t go on writing in this mood.  I’ll pack.

  Your own Chris.

  At Frau Berg’s, August 4th, 1914, very late.

Precious mother,