And then--then--she burrowed more firmly, held
her ears more tightly to, laughed a happy, gurgling laugh that almost
choked her: never, as long as she lived, would she forget the feel of
his moustache as it scratched her lips!
When she rose and looked at herself in the glass, it seemed
extraordinary that there should be no outward difference in her; and
for several days she did not lose this sensation of being mysteriously
changed. She was quieter than usual, and her movements were a little
languid, but a kind of subdued radiance peeped through and shone in
her eyes. She waited confidently for something to happen: she did not
herself know what it would be, but, after the miracle that had
occurred, it was beyond belief that things could jog on in their old
familiar course; and so she waited and expected--at every letter the
postman brought, each time the door-bell rang, whenever she went into
the street.
But after a week had dragged itself to an end, and she had not even
seen Schilsky again, she grew restless and unsure; and sometimes at
night, when Johanna thought she was asleep, she would stand at her
window, and, with a very different face from that which she wore by
day, put countless questions to herself, all of which began with why
and how. And Johanna was again beset by the fear that Ephie was
sickening for an illness, for the child would pass from bursts of
rather forced gaiety to fits of real fretfulness, or sink into brown
studies, from which she wakened with a start.
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