than half of it spent in incessant humiliation, defeat, and sorrow?
"That you think of me without anger and bitterness is more than I dared to hope and expect, and to read your joy between every line of your letter has given me the greatest satisfaction. May God bless and help you and the child, and grant you all the happiness I wish for both of you.
"My fondest love is yours, dear Jenny—you who were once mine.—Your devoted, Gert Gram."
Jenny remained with Mrs. Schlessinger; it was cheap, and she did not know what to do with herself. Spring was in the air. She walked on the pier in the evenings. Heavy clouds, bordered by the sun, with red and burning gold, chased across the immense open dome of the sky, and were reflected in the restless sea. The dark and desolate plain turned light green and the poplars reddish brown with young shoots. Along the railway line violets and small white and yellow flowers were coming up in hundreds, and at last the whole plain was luxuriously green, and a world of colour sprang forth along the ditches; sulphur-tinted irises and big white lilies were reflected in the pools of the marsh. Then one day the air was permeated by a sweet scent of hay, mixing with the smell of tar from the shore.
The hotel opened, and the small houses by the pier were filled with summer visitors; children swarmed on the white beach, rolling in the sand and paddling in the water. Mothers and nurses in national costumes of the Spreewald sat on the grass with their sewing, looking after them. The bathing-huts had been transported into the sea, and young girls were shouting and laughing in the water. Sailing yachts anchored by the pier, tourists came from the town, in the evenings there
