seemed like to burst with noise. A voice—not Imma's—called him off, and Klaus Heinrich found himself in a winter garden, a glass conservatory with white marble columns and a floor of big square marble flags. Palms of all kinds filled it, whose trunks and tops often reached close up to the glass ceiling. A flower-bed, consisting of countless pots arranged like the stones of a mosaic, lay in the strong moonlight of the arc lamp and filled the air with its scent. Out of a beautifully carved fountain, silver streams flowed into a marble pool, and ducks with strange and fantastic plumage swam about on the illuminated water. The back ground was filled by a stone walk with columns and niches.
It was Countess Löwenjoul who advanced towards the guest, and curtseyed with a smile.
"Your Royal Highness will not mind," she said, "our Percy is so uproarious. Besides, he's so unaccustomed to visitors. But he never touches anybody. Your Royal Highness must excuse Miss Spoelmann.… She'll be back soon. She was here just now. She was called away, her father sent for her. Mr. Spoelmann will be delighted.…"
And she conducted Klaus Heinrich to an arrangement of basket chairs with embroidered linen cushions which stood in front of a group of palms. She spoke in a brisk and emphatic tone, with her little head with its thin iron-grey hair bent on one side and her white teeth showing as she laughed. Her figure was distinctly graceful in the close-fitting brown dress she was wearing, and she moved as freshly and elegantly as an officer's wife. Only in her eyes, whose lids she kept blinking, there was something of mistrust or spite, something unintelligible. They sat down facing each other at the round garden-table, on which lay a few books. Percival, exhausted by his outburst, curled himself up on the narrow pearl-grey carpet on which the furniture stood. His black coat was like silk, with white paws, chest, and muzzle. He had a white collar,
