His answers were
short and rather compressed. The knowledge that they would be seen
by her prosaic parents, and that Loulou herself would hardly trouble
to read anything in the midst of her whirl of gayety, deprived him
of words, stopped the flow of his feelings, and turned his
expressions into mere Philistinisms. But, on the other Land,
Loulou's mother was delighted to have another correspondent, and so
she wrote to him often. These perfumed letters from Ostend refreshed
him by the remembrance of the lovable face with the dimples,
bringing back again the whole charm of the Hornberg days.
At the end of September came the announcement that the Ellrichs had
left Ostend, and were going to pay a visit for a fortnight to
friends in England, and toward the middle of October a letter,
bearing the Berlin postmark, arrived in Loulou's handwriting. It
said:
"DEAREST WILHEM: We came home to-day. I cannot sleep until I have
written to you. Come to see me quite soon. Will you not? How glad I
am! Are you glad too? A thousand greetings. LOULOU."
He would like to have gone directly to the Lennestrasse, but
etiquette stood between him and his fiancee, and showed him in its
cold fashion that they were now in the city and not in the forest,
that nature had nothing to do with them here, and had handed them
over to the laws of society.
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