Don't believe a word of all that I told you when I came home.--Oh, that won't help you any! You first read this letter--I am writing it right here at Madame von Randow's in order to lose no time--August is to give it to you when I am gone--thus, not a bit of it is true; my mother hadn't written at all; I lied; I have been lying to you and deceiving you most monstrously for a week, for I have not been going there during that time on your account, and that would have been the most injudicious procedure, as I am convinced that your Reinhold has long since noticed how matters stand with us and has kept out of the way even before we had an idea of it, and you may believe, Else, that two such men, when they are such good friends, stand by each other in such matters in a way that we girls couldn't improve upon. And for dear, blind Cilli we thought we needed to have no further concern, because she always smiled so cheerfully when we teased each other, and then, too, she couldn't see, and the eyes play such an important part in a matter of that kind, you know! Indeed, it began with the eyes, for up to that time all went well. But when he came to them he said: "At this point I shall have to determine what the color of your eyes really is; and I was puzzling my brain about that all those days." I declared they were yellow; Aunt Rikchen thought they were green; he himself thought they were brown--and Cilli, who was to decide the matter, said she was convinced that they were blue; she was so cheerful, and cheerful people must have blue eyes. So we jested to and fro and each day he began again with my eyes and, because one can't speak of eyes very well without looking into them, I looked into his eyes while he looked into mine, and I don't know whether you have ever had the same experience, Else--when one has done that a few days, one begins to see more clearly what is going on back of the eyes--very curious things. I tell you that a shudder goes over one; one doesn't know sometimes whether to laugh at the one who is looking, and give him a snip on the nose, or to take to crying and fall on his neck.