"Is that the case? . . . Yes, as to my father, he is certainly more of an artist than many a man who calls himself an artist and lives on his reputation as an artist. I just play the piano a bit. Now I am not permitted to play, but then, at home, I used to play. My father and I . . . we played together. Yes, all those years are dear to me. Especially the garden, our garden, to the rear of the house. It was wretchedly grown up in weeds, and surrounded by mossy, crumbling walls; but that was what gave it its charm. There was a spring in the middle, with a thick wreath of irises aboutit. In the summer I used to spend long hours there with my girl friends. We all sat around the spring on little camp-stools . . ."
"How beautiful!" Herr Spinell said, raising his shoulders. "Would you sit there and sing?"
"No, we sewed."
"Always . . . always that . . ."
"Yes, we sewed and chatted, my six girl frlends and I . . ."
"How beautiful! God, just listen, how beautiful!" exclaimed Herr Spinell, and his face was distorted with his enthusiasm.
"What do you find so especially beautiful in that, Herr Spinell?"
"Only this: that there were six beside you, that you were not included in this number, but stood out from the rest like a queen. You were distinguished from your six friends. A little crown, quite faint, but significant, shone in your hair . . ."
"No, nonsense, no sort of crown . . ."
"Still, it was shining secretly. I should have seen it, should have seen it plainly in your halr, if I had been hidden in the bushes at one of those times . . ."
"God only knows what might have seen. But you weren't hidden there, although one day it was my present husband who stepped out of the bushes accompanied by my father. I am afraid they had overheard a good deal too much of our chatter . . ."
"Then that was the place you first met your husband?"
"Yes, I met him there for the first time!" she said loudly and cheerfully; and as she smiled, the tiny, pale-blue vein stood out, strained and peculiar. "He had come to see my father on business, you see. The next day he was invited to dinner, and three days later he asked to marry me."
"Indeed! And it all happened with such extraordinary swiftness?"
"Yes . . . Or rather, from then on things went a little slower.
