Some said, his
nerves, for matter-of-fact as he seemed, he was in reality nervous.
Others ascribed it to Wagner's position on the Jewish question.
Probably both sides were right. At ten Innstetten relaxed and indulged
in a few well-meant, but rather tired caresses, which Effi accepted,
without genuinely returning them.
Thus passed the winter. April came and Effi was glad when the garden
behind the court began to show green.
She could hardly wait for summer to come with its walks along the
beach and its guests at the baths. * * * The months had been so
monotonous that she once wrote: "Can you imagine, mama, that I have
almost become reconciled to our ghost? Of course, that terrible night,
when Geert was away at the Prince's house, I should not like to live
through again, no, certainly not; but this being always alone, with
nothing whatever happening, is hard, too, and when I wake up in the
night I occasionally listen to see if I can hear the shoes, shuffling
up above, and when all is quiet I am almost disappointed and say to
myself: If only it would come back, but not too bad and not too
close!"
It was in February that Effi wrote these words and now it was almost
May. The "Plantation" was beginning to take on new life again and one
could hear the song of the finches. During this same week the storks
returned, and one of them soared slowly over her house and alighted
upon a barn near Utpatel's mill, its old resting place. Effi, who now
wrote to her mother more frequently than heretofore, reported this
happening, and at the conclusion of her letter said: "I had almost
forgotten one thing, my dear mama, viz.
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