She would often seat herself at the piano and let her fingers stray over the keys. But she did not get the pleasure out of playing that she had anticipated. Her father's discipline had long lost its effects. She had forgotten the pieces she had once known by heart, and she lacked the calm and patience to learn all over again.
Yes, it was strange what disquiet would seize her the instant she touched the keys, a feeling of dread, an anticipation of impending danger, a consciousness of her own unworthiness.
She could not keep on; she had to shut down the lid and take to wandering again from room to room until her legs wearied and ten o'clock summoned her to bed.
In those joyless, unoccupied days, a piercing, stinging desire for man awoke in her, causing her nerves to tingle and a sweet, tormenting shudder to thrill her body.
The whole of the two long years her senses had been mute. Tears of regret had drowned that which the colonel's senile depravity had enkindled, and the weeks of love with Walter von Prell had fanned into lively flames. Drowned it forever, it seemed. But there it stood again, transporting and shaming and refusing to be silenced by prayers or reproach.
Often she felt she would have to run out on the street just to catch the glance of any stranger--as in the Dresden days--and see desire flare up in eyes veiled with yearning.
But the people she might encounter on the street were rough and common. The mere thought of them made her tremble.
The only time she went out was to visit her former landlady.
The walk lasted a full hour, and before she had reached her former home, many a naïve admirer, many a keen _boulevardier_, had bobbed up beside her and tried to enter into a pleasant conversation. She always ran to the other side of the street, shaking herself. Sometimes, yes, sometimes, she would have liked to reply.
When she lay in bed with closed eyes, she dreamed of strong-willed, sharply cut men's faces, to which she looked up in yielding happiness.
She often dreamed, too, of Mr. Dehnicke, good, sound, loyal Mr. Dehnicke.
If he were to come to her some day and falter in that guilty way of his which she liked so well: "I love you inordinately, and want you to marry me," what would she say to him?