“I lived it,” I said.

“Of the other.

I remember nothing.”

He nodded.

“It is even better than I thought. And now that you are to have the child you believe that child is the fruit of your marriage, and that is the reason why you feel ready to welcome it. Had you thought but no matter. This is good. Anything we can do for you we shall be delighted to do, rest assured of that.”

Sometimes, looking back, -I ask myself: Why did you accept this and that? Why did you not enquire more closely into these strange things that happened to you? I suppose the answeris: I was very young and I appeared to have stepped into a world where strange things seemed the natural course of events.

I was brought down to reality one day in February. I was visiting Dr. Kleine once every three weeks and Ilse used to drive me into Klarengen; she would put the trap in an inn yard and shop while I went to Dr. Kleine’s nursing home.

He was satisfied with my progress and he did pay very special attention to me on Dr. Carlberg’s instruction. I had had a shock, Dr. Carlsberg had told him-Dr. Kleine believed this to be the death of my husband and in the circumstances might have a difficult confinement.

On this February day the sun was brilliant and there was a frost in the air. As I came out of the nursing home a voice behind me startled me as it took me right back to Oxford.

If it isn’t Helena Trant! “

I turned and there were the Misses Elkington who ran a little tea-shop near the Castle Mound, which was only open during the summer months.

They sold tea and coffee with homemade cakes, besides egg-cosies, tea-cosies and embroidered mats which they made themselves. I had never liked them. They were constantly apologizing for selling their wares and making sure that everyone knew it was something they were not used to as they had come down in the world, their father having been a General.

“Oh, it’s Miss Elkington and Miss Rose,” I said.

“Well, fancy meeting you here of all places.”

Their little eyes scrutinized me. They must have seen me come out of Dr. Kleine’s nursing home and would be wondering why. But not for long.

Although I wore a loose coat my condition could not but be perfectly obvious.

“And what are you doing here, Helena?” Miss Elkington the elder was roguishly censorious.

“I’m staying with my cousin.”

“Oh yes, of course, you`’ve been away some months.”

“I dare say I shall soon be back.”

“Well, well. It is a small world. So you are really staying here?”

“Not exactly. I’ve come in with my cousin. I’m joining her now.”

“I’m so glad we saw you,” said Miss Elkington.

“So nice to see people from home,” added her sister.

“I must hurry. My cousin is waiting.

I was relieved to get away from them. I looked at my reflection in a shop window. I didn’`t think there could be much doubt of my condition.

The weeks had passed and my time was getting near. Ilse fussed over me; often I would find her seated in silence with a worried frown on her forehead and I knew she was concerned for me.

She had consulted both Doctors Carlsberg and Kleine and they had decided that I should go into Dr. Kleine’s nursing home a week or so before my child was expected. As for myself, I continued in my state of placid euphoria. I could think of nothing but my child.

“You will have to wait until the baby is about a year old before you go to the Damenstift to teach English,” said Ilse. Dr. Carlsberg has not mentioned your name, but on his recommendation no obstacles would be put in the way of your going there. “

How strange-that would be! I thought. I remembered the old days (good heavens! It was not two years ago) when I had been a pupil-Helena Trant who had always been in trouble through her irrepressible spirits and love of adventure. How strange that I might go back, a mother.

I pictured Schwester Maria taking sly peeps at the baby and trying to spoil it; and Schwester Gudrun saying: “Where Helena Trant was, there was always trouble.”

Then sometimes I would think of those three days and my love was as strong as ever, making the longing to see Maximilian unbearable. Only the thought of our child could comfort me and I eagerly waited for the time when I should hold it in my arms.

On a bright April day Ilse drove me to the nursing home. I was taken to a private room, apart from the other patients. Dr. Carlsberg had asked that this should be so in view of the circumstances.

It was a pleasant room, everything gleaming white, yet seeming clinical in its cleanliness. There was a window from which I could look down on a lawn, which was very neatly bordered by flowerbeds.

Dr. Kleine introduced me to his wife, who expressed concern for my comfort. I asked how many other mothers were in the nursing home and I was told that there were several.

They were constantly coming and going.

On the first day I looked through my window and saw five or six women walking about the lawn-all in various stages of pregnancy. They were chatting together and two of them sat side by side on one of the wooden benches near the flowerbeds; one was knitting, the other crocheting. They were joined by another woman who took out her sewing; and they talked animatedly together.

I was sorry they had decided to isolate me. I wanted to be down there with those other women.

I had been told that I could use the Kleines’ little garden to get some fresh air, but this was not the one where the women met. I went down to the Kleines’ garden and sat for a while on a garden seat but there was no one there and I wanted to talk about babies, to compare knitting.

While I was in the garden Frau Kleine came out to me and I told her I had seen another garden from my room.

“There’s a lawn and there were several expectant mothers there. I should like to talk to them.”

She looked alarmed.

“I think the doctor doesn’`t feel that would be wise.”

“Why not?”

“I suppose he thinks it might upset you Why ever should it?”

“They all have homes and husbands. I think he thinks it might depress you.”

“It wouldn’`t,” I cried vehemently. And I thought then I would not change the father of my child for any respectable husband these women might have. Then I knew that the reason I could be so happy was that I still believed that one day Maximilian would come back for me and then I should proudly show him our child; and within me there flourished still my childish dream that we should live happily ever after.

When I went back to my room the first thing I did was look out of the window. The lawn was deserted; they had all gone back to their rooms.

But I determined to go down to the lawn.

Dr. Kleine now knew my story (Dr. Carlsberg had thought it wise to tell him) but it had been agreed that for the purposes of preventing gossip-which would have been magnified in any case and no doubt distorted. I was to be known as Mrs. Trant, a widow who had lost her husband some months before.

It was early afternoon, the siesta hour, when I decided to find my way down to the lawn. The house appeared to have been built round the garden which contained the lawn, and the women I had seen there had come from a door completely opposite the wing in which I had my room.

I would have to work my way round to it so that I could come out by the door through which I had seen the women emerge.

I opened my door quietly. There was not a sound in the corridor. I went swiftly to a flight of stairs, descended it and found myself on a landing. I went along this in what I thought was the right direction and I came to a short flight of stairs which led to a door. As I approached I heard the sound of sobbing. I paused and listened.

There was no doubt that someone was in great distress.

I hesitated, wondering whether it would be better to find out if I could be of use or to ignore what I heard. Then on impulse I went up the three or four stairs and knocked on the door. The sobbing stopped.

I knocked again.

“Who’s there?” said a high-pitched, frightened voice.

“May I come in?” I asked. There was a sound which could have been an affirmative so I opened the door and entered a room rather like my own but smaller, and hunched on the bed was a girl of about my own age, her face swollen with crying, her hair in disorder.

We stared at each other.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Everything,” she replied bleakly.

I approached the bed and sat on it; “I feel so terrible,” she said.

“Should I call someone?”

She shook her head.

“It’s not that. I wish it were. It’s long overdue.

I know I’m going to die. “

“Of course you won’t. You’ll feel better when the baby comes.”

Again she shook her head.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. Last night I thought of jumping out of the window.”

Oh no! “

“It’s different for you. You`’ve got a husband and a home and it’s all going to be wonderful.”

I didn’`t answer. I said: “And you haven’t?”

“We should have been married,” she said.

“He was killed six months ago. He was in the Duke’s Guard and the bomb was meant for the Duke. He would have married me.”

“So he was a soldier.”

She nodded.

“We would have been married if he’d lived,” she reiterated.

In the Duke’s Guard, I was thinking. Duke Carl of Rochenstein and Dorrenig, Count of Lokenberg.

“Your family will look after you,” I soothed.

Again the doleful shake of the head.

“No they won’t. They won’t have me back. They brought me to Dr. Kleine but when it’s over they won’t have me back. I tried to kill myself once before. I walked out into the river but then I was frightened and they rescued me and brought me here.”

She was small and very young and frightened and I longed to help her.

I wanted to tell her that I myself had a future to face which might not be easy; but my story was so fantastic, so different from one of a soldier lover who had come to an untimely end.

She was only sixteen, she told me. I felt so much older and protective. I said it was always wrong to despair. I was of some use to her, I believe, because of my recent suffering. I could recall, because it was so recent, the terrible desolation which had swept over me when I had been told that my romantic marriage was nothing but a myth.

At least, I thought, this girl has a plausible tragedy to relate.

I made her talk and she told me about the town of Rochenburg, the chief city of Rochenstein, where she had lived with her grandmother who remembered the day the present Duke’s father died, and he became the head of the ruling house. He had always been a good and serious-minded Duke-rather different from his son Prince Carl, who was notoriously wild. Her grandmother had been a great loyalist and she would have welcomed a soldier of the Duke’s Guard into the family, but if he had been one of Ludwig’s men she would never have accepted him.

But that made it all the more terrible because if they had not anticipated their marriage vows, if they had waited, they could have been respectably married in due course. But fate had gone against them. Their child was conceived just before the bomb intended for the Duke had destroyed her lover, leaving her desolate for ever-and with a double burden, for to her grief was added shame. She could not endure it; nor would her grandmother. She had no notion how she was going to fend for herself and the child, and the river had seemed an easy solution.

“You must never do that again,” I told her.

“You’ll find a way. We all do.”

“You’re all right.

“I I ha vent a husband to go to.”

Oh, so you’re a widow? That’s sad. But you have money, I suppose.

Most people who come to Dr. Kleine’s have. I don’t know why he has taken me in. When I was brought in half drowned and they were scolding me about having done harm to my child he said he would take me in here and look after me. “

“That was kind of him. But I haven’t any money either. I shall have to support myself and my child. I may be teaching English at a convent.”

“You are accomplished. I have nothing to recommend me. I’m just a simple girl.”

“What is your name?”

“Gretchen,” she said.

“Gretchen Swartz.”