He stuck her note unread into his waistcoat which, being fashionably short, did not retain it very well. It slipped out and fell to the floor without his noticing. Charlotte saw it and picked it up and handed it to him with a hasty glance. ‘Here is something in your handwriting which you may not want to lose,’ she said.

He was taken aback. ‘Is she pretending?’ he asked himself. ‘Does she know what is in the note or has she really been misled by the similarity in the handwriting?’ He hoped and believed it was the latter case. He had been warned, he had been warned twice, but his passion could not read these strange fortuitous signs through which a higher being seems to be speaking to us, they led him rather on and on, so that the constraint in which he felt he was being kept became more and more irksome. His friendly sociability disappeared. His heart was hardened and when he had to be together with his wife and his friend he found it impossible to discover or rekindle in his heart his former affection for them. He silently reproached himself for this and that was an additional discomfort. He tried to surmount it by resorting to a kind of humorousness but because his humour was now without love it also lacked the charm it used to have.

Charlotte was helped over all these trials by the state of mind she was in. She was conscious always of how earnestly she had resolved to forswear her affection, fair and noble though it was.

She wishes very much to come to the aid of the other couple too. She feels that distance alone will not be enough to cure the disease, it is too grave for that. She makes up her mind to speak to the good child about it but she cannot: the memory of her own inconstancy stands in her way. She tries to talk about it in general terms: generalities apply to her own case too and she shrinks from talking about that. Every word of advice she wants to give Ottilie strikes back into her own heart. She wants to warn her and feels that she herself may be in need of warning.

She continues to keep the lovers apart and to say nothing and this does not improve matters. Gentle hints which escape her from time to time have no effect on Ottilie: Eduard has convinced Ottilie of Charlotte’s affection for the Captain and convinced her that Charlotte herself wants a divorce and that he is now thinking of a decent way of bringing one about.

Ottilie, borne by the feeling of her innocence along the path to the happiness she desires, lives only for Eduard. Fortified in all that is good by her love for him, because of him happier in all that she does, more open towards other people, she lives in a heaven on earth.

So they carry on with their daily lives, each in his own way, reflecting and not reflecting. Everything seems to be going on as it always does. Because even in momentous times, when everything is at stake, you do go on with your daily life as if nothing is happening.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MEANWHILE a letter from the Count had arrived for the Captain. Two letters in fact. One, for letting the others read, described vaguely the prospects opening up for the Captain, which were said to be very fair; the other, which contained a definite present offer of an important court and administrative post, the rank of major, a considerable salary and other benefits, was on account of various attendant circumstances to be kept secret for the time being. The Captain kept it secret, he told his friends only about the hopes being held out to him and concealed what was imminent.

He went on vigorously meanwhile with the work in hand and quietly arranged that everything would go forward unhindered when he had left. It is now in his own interest that a definite finishing date should be fixed for many things, that Ottilie’s birthday should hasten many things. The two friends, although they have come to no express understanding, now work well together. Eduard is now very content for them to have augmented their funds by drawing money in advance. The whole operation is moving forward as fast as it can.

The Captain would now have liked to advise altogether against converting the three lakes into one great lake. The lower dam had to be strengthened, the middle dams removed, and the whole thing was in more than one sense momentous and dubious. But both works, in so far as they could be fitted in together, had already been started on, and here a young architect, a former pupil of the Captain, arrived at very much the right moment.