"Pardon!" she said calmly; "I forgot that she is a German, and, moreover, a Rothenburg woman. But just so much less do I comprehend why you condemn yourself to a lifetime of such work; representing only the church and _klimperthor_, or, as it is called--" "_Klingerthor_, my lady." "Well, then, all this trashy masonry and commonplace Gothic rubbish, as if there were no Colosseum, no baths of Caracalla, no theatre at Taormina! And what vegetation, what luxuriant growths there are among the ruins of those old temples; what pines and cypresses, what distant glimpses of ocean and mountains! Believe me, I myself, although I am not yet an old woman, would have been dead and buried long ago if I had not escaped from narrow, maddeningly lifeless surroundings, and found salvation in that land of beauty and freedom." "Madame is not married?" She threw the glowing cigarette stump out of the window, pressed her regular, little white teeth together an instant, and then said, in an indescribably indifferent voice-- "My husband, the General, was governor of a moderately large fortress in the interior of Russia, and naturally could not accompany me. Then, too, at his age, it would have been hard for him to forego his home comforts. So we decided to arrange a rendezvous somewhere on the frontier for every two years, and since then each has lived much more contentedly. "I well know," she continued, as he looked at her with some disapproval, "that this conception of married happiness is revolting to sentimental German prejudices. But, believe me, in many respects, we barbarians are in advance of your highly refined civilization; and we make up for our lack of political liberty by our greater social freedom. If you were a Russian, you would have emancipated yourself long ago, and followed the lead of your Tauber, though in the opposite direction. And what would you have lost by it? When you returned in a year or two as a well-developed artist, would you not find your house on the same spot, your wife as domestic and youthful as ever, your children, perhaps half a head taller, but as clean and pretty as you left them?" "You are right! It is only too true," he stammered, pushing his hands nervously through his hair. "Oh, if I had but seen it so clearly before!" "Before? A young man like you, not yet beyond thirty! But I see it now; you are too fond of the flesh-pots of Rothenburg. You are right; remain at home and earn an honest living. The proposition which I was just about to make would appear to you less rational than if I commanded you to travel in a desert and hunt tigers and crocodiles, instead of landscape motives." She flung the sharp-pointed dart at him with so much quiet grace that he felt at once charmed and wounded.