Else, fatigued and disturbed, starts out for a walk in the open, while her aunt Valerie lies in a sleepy stupor in her room. Else comes through the portière just in time to see Golm kiss Carla. She now considers the bond between Carla and Ottomar broken. She contrasts their relations with her own to Reinhold, and longs to see Reinhold. She goes into the park whose regular lines oppress her. She wanders on till she comes to the Pölitz house, where she learns that little Karl, who was sick when she was there before, has died. The Pölitz family is in a bad plight, reflecting the evil character of the Count. Else listens to the sad stories of Mrs. Pölitz and her sister-in-law, Marie, whom Golm has seduced, and hurries on to Wissow Hook to see Reinhold.] * * * * * Mrs. Pölitz had said it was an hour's walk to Wissow Hook, but it seemed to Else as if the very winding way would never end. And yet she walked so fast that she left the little empty hay wagon just as far behind her as it was ahead of her at the start. The wretched vehicle was the only sign of human activity; otherwise the brown plain lay as bare as a desert as far as the eye could reach; not a single large tree was to be seen, only here and there a few scattered willows and tangled shrubbery on the ditches, which ran this way and that, and a broader, slowly flowing brook constantly widening, which she crossed on an unsafe wooden bridge, without a railing. The brook must have come from the range of hills to the right, at the base of which Else saw, in striking contrast, the buildings of the other two Warnow estates, Gristow and Damerow. Swinging around in a great bend, she gradually ascended to Wissow Hook, which lay directly before her, while the plain to the left extended without the least undulation to the lower dunes, lifting their white crests here and there above the edge of the heath. Only once a leaden gray streak, which must be the sea, although Else could scarcely distinguish it from the sky, appeared for a few minutes in an opening through which the brook may have had its source. For the sky above her too was a leaden gray, except that it seemed somewhat darker above the sea. In the east, then above the hills toward the west, and along the leaden gray vault here and there, scattered white spots floated, like powder smoke, motionless in the still air. Not the slightest breeze was stirring, and yet from time to time a strange whisper crept through the waste as if the brown heath were trying to rouse itself from deep sleep, and a soft, long continued sound of sadness could be heard through the heavy murky air, and then again a boundless stillness, when Else thought she could hear her heart beat.