Yet the reader may be surprised to learn that several years later the Count and Christine decide to remarry, despite the earlier distressing events that pulled them asunder. The remarriage is celebrated in appropriate style and, viewed superficially, the couple appear to be destined for renewed happiness, based presumably on the conviction that lessons have been learnt by both parties. It soon becomes clear, however, that Christine is unable to forget, or to adapt her emotional and spiritual aspirations sufficiently to resume the life which she and Holk had enjoyed in their earlier union, in which they had managed to accommodate their strongly divergent natures, – the husband with his rather unquestioning superficiality and the wife with her superior attitudes and bigoted religiosity – with relative success. Her faith, having grounded and guided her from a young age and even having caused her to scorn intolerantly other, and in her eyes, lesser denominations, does not prevent her now from succumbing to a deep and dangerous melancholy. Only her friend and companion Julie Dobschütz becomes aware of her dark and increasingly despairing mood, and when Christine suddenly and unaccountably disappears from the castle, she realizes with alarm what the consequences will be. Christine’s lifeless body is soon given up by the Baltic Sea by the shores of which the seemingly privileged Holk family had made its life and in which the unhappy woman has chosen to drown.