foreign to my Effi and it must be got rid of absolutely.  There is nothing better for that than fresh air.  The weather is splendid, cool and mild at the same time, with hardly a breeze stirring.  How should you like to take a drive with me?  A long one, not merely out through the “Plantation.”  In the sleigh, of course, with the sleigh-bells on and the white snow blankets.  Then if we are back by four you can take a rest, and at seven we shall be at Gieshuebler’s and hear Trippelli.”

Effi took his hand.  “How good you are, Geert, and how indulgent!  For I must have seemed to you very childish, or at least very childlike, first in the episode of fright and then, later, when I asked you to sell the house, but worst of all in what I said about the Prince.  I urged you to break off all connection with him, and that would be ridiculous.  For after all he is the one man who has to decide our destiny.  Mine, too.  You don’t know how ambitious I am.  To tell the truth, it was only out of ambition that I married you.  Oh, you must not put on such a serious expression.  I love you, you know.  What is it we say when we pluck a blossom and tear off the petals?  ’With all my heart, with grief and pain, beyond compare.’” She burst out laughing.  “And now tell me,” she continued, as Innstetten still kept silent, “whither shall we go?”

“I thought, to the railway station, by a roundabout way, and then back by the turnpike.  We can dine at the station or, better, at Golchowski’s, at the Prince Bismarck Hotel, which we passed on the day of our return home, as you perhaps remember.  Such a visit always has a good effect, and then I can have a political conversation with the Starost by the grace of Effi, and even if he does not amount to much personally he keeps his hotel in good condition and his cuisine in still better.  The people here are connoisseurs when it comes to eating and drinking.”

It was about eleven when they had this conversation.  At twelve Kruse drove the sleigh up to the door and Effi got in.  Johanna was going to bring a foot bag and furs, but Effi, after all that she had juat passed through, felt so strongly the need of fresh air that she took only a double blanket and refused everything else.  Innstetten said to Kruse:  “Now, Kruse, we want to drive to the station where you and I were this morning.  The people will wonder at it, but that doesn’t matter.  Say, we drive here past the ‘Plantation,’ and then to the left toward the Kroschentin church tower.  Make the horses fly.  We must be at the station at one.”

Thus began the drive.  Over the white roofs of the city hung a bank of smoke, for there was little stir in the air.  They flew past Utpatel’s mill, which turned very slowly, and drove so close to the churchyard that the tips of the barberry bushes which hung out over the lattice brushed against Effi, and showered snow upon her blanket.  On the other side of the road was a fenced-in plot, not much larger than a garden bed, and with nothing to be seen inside except a young pine tree, which rose out of the centre.