She resolved to shut her hot-lidded eyes, but opened them in a little while to torture herself with the knowledge of that ungeometrical thing against the far wall. Then she saw a child--an untidy, thin-faced little girl of about ten, who must have strayed in from the adjoining flat. This proved--Frau Ebermann groaned again at the way the world falls to bits when one is sick--proved that Anna had forgotten to shut the outer door of the flat when she went to the chemist. Frau Ebermann had had children of her own, but they were all grown up now, and she had never been a child-lover in any sense. Yet the intruder might be made to serve her scheme of things. 'Make--put,' she muttered thickly, 'that white thing straight on the top of that yellow thing.' The child paid no attention, but moved about the room, investigating everything that came in her way--the yellow cut-glass handles of the chest of drawers, the stamped bronze hook to hold back the heavy puce curtains, and the mauve enamel, New Art finger-plates on the door. Frau Ebermann watched indignantly. 'Aie! That is bad and rude. Go away!' she cried, though it hurt her to raise her voice. 'Go away by the road you came!' The child passed behind the bed-foot, where she could not see her. 'Shut the door as you go. I will speak to Anna, but--first, put that white thing straight.' She closed her eyes in misery of body and soul. The outer door clicked, and Anna entered, very penitent that she had stayed so long at the chemist's. But it had been difficult to find the proper type of inhaler, and-- 'Where did the child go?' moaned Frau Ebermann--'the child that was here?' 'There was no child,' said startled Anna. 'How should any child come in when I shut the door behind me after I go out? All the keys of the flats are different.' 'No, no! You forgot this time. But my back is aching, and up my legs also. Besides, who knows what it may have fingered and upset? Look and see.' 'Nothing is fingered, nothing is upset,' Anna replied, as she took the inhaler from its paper box. 'Yes, there is. Now I remember all about it. Put--put that white thing, with the open edge--the lace, I mean--quite straight on that--' she pointed. Anna, accustomed to her ways, understood and went to it. 'Now, is it quite straight?' Frau Ebermann demanded. 'Perfectly,' said Anna. 'In fact, in the very centre of the radiator.' Anna measured the equal margins with her knuckle, as she had been told to do when she first took service. 'And my tortoise-shell hair brushes?' Frau Ebermann could not command her dressing-table from where she lay. 'Perfectly straight, side by side in the big tray, and the comb laid across them. Your watch also in the coralline watch-holder. Everything'--she moved round the room to make sure--'everything is as you have it when you are well.' Frau Ebermann sighed with relief. It seemed to her that the room and her head had suddenly grown cooler.