“Chinaman, you mean.  You see, Effi, one can pronounce the fearful word without his appearing.  What you saw or what, as you think, slipped past your bed, was the little Chinaman that the maids pasted on the back of the chair upstairs.  I’ll wager he had a blue coat on and a very flat-crowned hat, with a shining button on top.”

She nodded.

“Now you see, a dream, a hallucination.  And then, I presume, Johanna told you something last night, about the wedding upstairs.”

“No.”

“So much the better.”

“She didn’t tell me a word.  But from all this I can see that there is something queer here.  And then the crocodile; everything is so uncanny here.”

“The first evening, when you saw the crocodile, you considered it fairy-like—­”

“Yes, then.”

“And then, Effi, I can’t well leave here now, even if it were possible to sell the house or make an exchange.  It is with this exactly as with declining an invitation to Varzin.  I can’t have the people here in the city saying that District Councillor Innstetten is selling his house because his wife saw the little pasted-up picture of a Chinaman as a ghost by her bed.  I should be lost, Effi.  One can never recover from such ridiculousness.”

“But, Geert, are you so sure that there is nothing of the kind?”

“That I will not affirm.  It is a thing that one can believe or, better, not believe.  But supposing there were such things, what harm do they do?  The fact that bacilli are flying around in the air, of which you have doubtless heard, is much worse and more dangerous than all this scurrying about of ghosts, assuming that they do scurry about, and that such a thing really exists.  Then I am particularly surprised to see you show such fear and such an aversion, you a Briest.  Why, it is as though you came from a low burgher family.  Ghosts are a distinction, like the family tree and the like, and I know families that would as lief give up their coat of arms as their ‘Lady in white,’ who may even be in black, for that matter.”

Effi remained silent.

“Well, Effi; no answer?”

“What do you expect me to answer?  I have given in to you and shown myself docile, but I think you in turn might be more sympathetic.  If you knew how I long for sympathy.  I have suffered a great deal, really a very great deal, and when I saw you I thought I should now be rid of my fear.  But you merely told me you had no desire to make yourself ridiculous in the eyes either of the Prince or of the city.  That is small comfort.  I consider it small, and so much the smaller, since, to cap the climax, you contradict yourself, and not only seem to believe in these things yourself, but even expect me to have a nobleman’s pride in ghosts.  Well, I haven’t.  When you talk about families that value their ghosts as highly as their coat of arms, all I have to say is, that is a matter of taste, and I count my coat of arms worth more.  Thank heaven, we Briests have no ghosts.  The Briests were always very good people and that probably accounts for it.”