There was a strange agitation inside her and she could not weep.

The Captain was describing how he intended the park should look. He said the boat was very good and that it was a sign of a good boat that one person with two oars could easily row and steer it by himself. She would discover that for herself, it was a nice feeling to float off across the water alone sometimes and be your own ferryman and steersman.

These words made the imminent separation weigh suddenly more heavily upon her heart. ‘Is he saying it deliberately?’ she asked herself. ‘Does he know? Or suspect? Or is it only chance, does he unconsciously foretell me my fate?’ She was seized by a terrible feeling of dejection and by a feeling of impatience. She begged him to go back to shore now, at once, and return with her to the mansion.

It was the first time the Captain had been on the lakes and although he had undertaken a general survey of their depth there were still places he was not familiar with. It began to get dark. He directed the boat to where he thought there might be a spot where it would be easy to disembark and where he knew the footpath to the mansion was not far off. But he went a little aside even from this course he felt fairly sure of when Charlotte repeated in a voice that had a kind of alarm in it that she wanted to get quickly to land. He rowed harder and got closer to the bank, but when he was still some way from it he felt a resistance and realized the boat had got stuck. He tried to force it free but it had stuck fast. What could he do now? There was nothing for it but to get out of the boat, the water was shallow enough, and carry Charlotte to land. He succeeded in taking the dear burden across without accident, he was strong enough to do it without tottering or giving her any cause for anxiety, but at the outset she had been anxious and had clasped her arms round his neck. He held her tight and pressed her to him. Not until he reached a grass slope did he put her down and when he did so it was not without a feeling of agitation and confusion. She was still clasping his neck. He put his arms around her again and kissed her violently on the mouth. But that same moment he was lying at her feet, pressing his lips to her hand and saying: ‘Charlotte, will you forgive me?’

The kiss her friend had given her and which she had almost returned brought Charlotte to herself. She pressed his hand but did not lift him up from where he was lying. Instead she leaned down to him and laid a hand on his shoulder and said: ‘We cannot help it if this moment is an epoch in our lives, but whether this moment shall be worthy of us does lie within our power. You must go, dear friend, and you will go. The Count is now making arrangements which will make a better life for you: I am very glad of it and very sorry. I wanted to keep quiet about it until it was certain, but this moment compels me to reveal this secret to you. I can forgive you, and forgive myself, only if we have the courage to alter our mode of life, since it does not lie within our power to alter our feelings.’ She lifted him up and took his arm and supported herself on it, and they went back to the mansion in silence.

But now she was standing in her bedroom, where she had to feel and regard herself as Eduard’s wife. In this confusion of contradictory feelings her sound character, disciplined and tested in a hundred ways through life’s experiences, came to her aid. She was always accustomed to know herself, to exercise self-control, and even now she did not find it difficult, by giving serious thought to the matter, to come close to the equanimity she desired. She was even able to smile at the way she had acted when Eduard had paid his curious visit the previous night. And then she was suddenly seized by a strange presentiment, a joyful anxious shuddering went through her, and deeply affected she knelt down and repeated the vow she had made to Eduard at the altar. Friendship, affection, renunciation passed as vivid images before her mind. She felt inwardly restored.