As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:
Edith had just returned home with her father from the doctor when Hans Warsow was announced to her.
The old Reckenstein citizen was considerably better. The treatment had done wonders. But he still couldn't get used to the city and its peculiar customs. And because he had visits only in the afternoons and in the evening, he grumbled about this pointless disturbance of his peace, which was prescribed for him before dinner.
"I'm not putting in an appearance; you speak with him if it must be. But make it short!"
"Really, my visit is meant mainly for you, Miss von Barrnhoff," replied Hans when she apologized for her father with his illness. And to get to his real purpose immediately: "I wanted to ask you to enter into the managing committee of a deacon society that we want to establish after the occurrence of another also in our Nicolaus congregation."
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"A deacon society - what's that? Excuse my ignorance in these things."
"A society in which a number of ladies join forces under the chairmanship of the priest in order to take over the care of the poor and the sick personally."
"And how does that happen? I mean, how do they do that?"
"Now, by visiting them in their apartments, checking their living conditions and their need through getting hold of food or guiding in an-other suitable way."
"They visit them in their apartments?"
"Yes, it's exactly on this personal work and interest that we place value. The poor and the sick should know that even one in the higher class has a heart for them. A bridge should be built to reconcile the conflict of the classes that our city fulfills too."
"To reconcile the conflict of the classes - " she repeated slowly, and a quiet smile lay on her lips. His eye rested on its appearance. Her slender shape with the harmony of her limbs and the soft, somewhat slow movements, the head with the sharply cut face and that distinct determination in it, that knows what it wants and doesn't need to ask, and over all of it, the crown of the wonderful hair, something distinctly German and at the same time rurally aristocratic spoke from her appearance and her face. He could not escape from the impression of her personality. She was the first women who exercised a certain power on him.
"I appreciate the faith that you place in my, Sir Priest," she replied after short consideration. But you may
---53---
charge me with it if I don't warrant it. Your choice has not fallen on the right one."
"I was prepared for this answer," he said very quietly, "and still I would like to know why you give me such a short negative reply."
She hesitated a moment. "Because for me it appears the main thing for a person and his action [is] that he knows where his purpose lay and what he feels himself capable of. Because only then can he work with success and satisfaction. I do not hold myself capable of this type of work that you wish from me."
"No," he answered with the same quiet, "it does not lie in that. But you don't want it to."
"Who tells you I don't?"
"Your whole behavior from the beginning on. Constantly you have lookt with disdain, sometimes almost animosity, on that in which I saw my purpose, what I began with a good, honest will. You have despised my spiritual striving, never read my books, not even the one about East Prussia. With some chapters that I wrote in a peaceful moment, I thought about you, about the impression that it would probably make on you - and you didn't read it once -"
"You thought about me?"
Suddenly there was an-other sound in her voice: something astonished, shocked almost, simultaneously something soft, warm, as - until now - he had never it heard from her.
"Yes, about you," he freely admitted. "It's something in you, in your appearance, in your essence, that for me embodies this country in its strength and significance."
She lookt at him; a marvelous glow was in her eyes - but only for a second, then
---54---
it again had that expression of quiet stiffness that to him [was] so often too strange and that he did not like in them.
"I changed my job," he continued, and his speech became more lively and faster, "and came here as a priest. In the new office I like to have dealt with some false things, to have made some mistake - it is not easy to find one's self in such a changed condition, especially when one should be exemplary in everything that one says and does - ,but one thing I may claim of myself: I also brought the good, honest will here and, if it doesn't sound exalted: the pure heart."
"I believe you."
"But you don't help me when I ask you."
"I would like to say something to you, Pastor Warsow, even at the risk that we will then no longer understand each other at all - "
He noticed that it was not becoming easy for her to continue.
"I - yes, I also cannot regard this type of working effort as much as you. The care of the poor and sick of the congregation, it is a beautiful, noble thought. But do you really believe that the women whom you call together for this purpose are capable of translating it into the act?"
"It will be difficult for them in the beginning; then they will grow into their duty."
"They will not be missing a good will, certainly not. They will give with full hands - always to the wrong one! Because from where do they have the eye for the real need, from where the practice? I am afraid that what they do in this way is again a dilettantism of the work that I've always hated."
---55---
"Perhaps you yourself have not yet made an attempt?"
"I have not been idle in Reckenstein and have my experiences; because I have met almost all the people - and always gave to the wronged. To join myself now to completely strange people in an unknown congregation with such a responsible mission, I don't have the courage for that."
She had gotten up and stood in a position exactly opposite him; then the bitter uncommunicativeness was also in her figure.
As Hans left Edith, two things were in him: anger and sadness. And he didn't know which of the two was larger.
From this hour on, there was a change in him. One noticed it both in his character and in his work. He was busier and more dedicated in his work than ever. But he struggled with some difficulties in his position that concerned him all the more, he took everything ever more scrupulously.
The spring came and brought a few beautiful days of the gathering of the three siblings in Bärwalde. But even Fritz found his brother changed.
"It is the uninterrupted activity that has exhausted him," he said to Else. "If he had my healthy work out in the open, he would be fresh and well like I."
On an evening on the veranda they both took him to task: he had to open up and do something for himself. He refused.
But as the summer came closer and the days in Rodenburg became hot and paralyzing for the work, the longing for air and freedom grabbed him so unbearably that he submitted an application for four weeks of vacation and set out on the trip.
