“CAN it be that she loves me?” I asked myself next morning, directly I awoke. I did not want to look into myself. I felt that her image, the image of the “girl with the affected laugh,” had crept close into my heart, and that I should not easily get rid of it. I went to L - - - - and stayed there the whole day, but I saw Acia only by glimpses. She was not well; she had a headache. She came downstairs for a minute, with a bandage round her forehead, looking white and thin, her eyes half - closed. With a faint smile she said, “It will soon be over, it’s nothing; everything’s soon over, isn’t it?” and went away. I felt bored and, as it were, listlessly sad, yet I could not make up my mind to go for a long while, and went home late, without seeing her again.
The next morning passed in a sort of half slumber of the consciousness. I tried to set to work, and could not; I tried to do nothing and not to think - - and that was a failure too. I strolled about the town, returned home, went out again.
“Are you Herr N - - - - ?” I heard a childish voice ask suddenly behind me. I looked round; a little boy was standing before me. “This is for you from Fraülein Annette,” he said, handing me a note.
I opened it and recognised the irregular rapid handwriting of Acia. “I must see you to - day,” she wrote to me; “come to - day at four o’clock to the stone chapel on the road near the ruin. I have done a most foolish thing to - day. . . . Come, for God’s sake; you shall know all about it. . . . Tell the messenger, yes.”
“Is there an answer?” the boy asked me.
“Say, yes,” I replied. The boy ran off.