As Marion sat listening to her friend chatter on about one meaningless nonentity after another, her heart grew quietly heavy. In truth, the count’s wife seemed to have stopped growing in the most important ways that define personhood and individuality. She had become steadily more self-absorbed, taking to her shallow romances and magazines and fussing about her clothes and the state of her home. The count was often in Berlin, Gustav was nearly a man, and the poor lady was left with no companion at her side other than the disposition of her own being. She was finding, sadly, more to her friend’s dismay than her own, that she did not possess enough sustenance of brain and heart to keep herself well occupied.

Marion found the friendship they had shared as young people fading more and more into memory. As it did, she gave more and more thought to the airy castles they had built on behalf of their son and daughter and realized what a mistake it had been ever to allow talk of it to go so far. When Countess von Schmundt, therefore, brought up the subject, it was already not far from Marion’s mind.

“Do you not think, Marion,” she said after a brief silence had fallen between them, “that it is time we begin making plans?”

“Plans, Ingrid—what kind of plans?”

“Why, for the wedding, of course. My Gustav is eighteen.”

“Yes, and my Sabina is only sixteen. I wouldn’t think of her marrying so young.”

“But time is passing quickly. It is not too soon to be thinking of these things.”

“You speak as if it were completely decided.”

“Isn’t it? I thought we—”

“Ingrid, that was years ago,” the baron’s wife answered, feeling a sense of grieving pity in her heart.

“Marion, I do not understand,” said the count’s wife in a tone of injury. “You haven’t… changed your mind?”

For a fleeting moment, Marion’s heart nearly broke within her. The very tone of her friend’s voice betrayed not mere surprise or even hurt, but the stultifying trauma of being mortally wounded by her best friend.

“Please, Ingrid,” said Marion tenderly, “it was only daydreaming. We only said what if to one another, there were no plans.” Her voice was quiet and tender, hurting for her friend.

“You weren’t serious, Marion?” said the countess, still trying to absorb the blow. Suddenly she looked so much older than Marion ever remembered seeing her. The fleshy jowls of her cheeks sagged below her dark, drooping eyes, and Marion could scarcely hold back the tears. How could they have become so different, almost without her noticing?

“Perhaps I was seriously daydreaming,” she said, “but not serious as to a firm commitment. The children were so young then. Such is a decision neither you nor I can make for either Gustav or Sabina.”

“But my Gustav is in love with Sabina.”

“In love, Ingrid?”