improve
her judgment. Her favorite words were, give me, show me, tell me! From
morning till night he must give, tell, show. The sea washed up a medusa
to the shore--give it me! They surprised a crab in the act of shedding
his armor--show me! A ride on donkeys to a neighboring village reminded
him of a students' picnic at Heidelberg--tell me about it! Such of his
peculiarities of temper as she did not understand, she guessed at and
felt with her fine womanly instinct. If at Ault she had been extremely
simple in her dress, here she was almost exaggeratedly so. She banished
the "kohl" with which she had underlined her brilliant eyes, and
strewed the violet powder to the four winds, as soon as she discovered
that he preferred to stroke her full, firm cheeks when they were
guiltless of powder. She dropped her former freedom of speech, gave up
the telling of highly-spiced anecdotes, and checked her roving glances
and the frolicsome imps--somewhat too deeply versed in Boccaccio--that
haunted her lively brain, when she saw that he took umbrage at anything
the least risky. Her cigarettes horrified him, so she threw them out of
the window, and never smoked again. She even quelled the sensuality of
her self-surrender, and veiled it with a show of shame-faced
backwardness and the adorable ingenuousness of a schoolgirl on her
honeymoon. She strove to obliterate the remembrances of the heathenish
abandonment of the first days, with their unrestrained impulses,
testifying all too plainly to the fact that she was a woman well versed
in all the arts of seduction. At first this was dissimulation, the
maneuvers of a shrewd, reader of character, but it soon came to be
instinct and second nature; she deceived herself honestly, and
returned, in her own mind, to the pristine virginity of her soul and
body, finally coming to look upon herself as a simple-minded girl,
ignorant of the world and of life, and conscious only of her boundless
love for this one glorious man, and to whom the memories of a less
harmless past seemed like wicked dreams sent by the Tempter to molest
her chastity. This self-deception, or rather retrogression of her
instincts, led her into touches of mysticism. The story of little Sonia
who had fallen in love with the ten-year-old Wilhelm at first sight, to
die shortly afterward with his name upon her lips, made a deep
impression on her, and set her dreaming. "When sweet little Sonia died
I was born." Now this was not quite