"Yes, yes, of course, that's so," said Herr Rupius; "The Hague is a very beautiful town. I was there fourteen years ago. At that time I was twenty-eight, I am now forty-two--or, I might say, eighty-four"--he picked up the print and laid it aside--"here we have an Ostade--'The Pipe Smoker.' Quite so, you can see easily enough that he is smoking a pipe. 'Original in Vienna.'" "I think I remember that picture." "Won't you come and sit opposite to me, Frau Bertha, or here beside me, if you would care to look at the pictures with me? Now we come to a Falkenborg--wonderful, isn't it? In the extreme foreground, though, it seems so void, so cramped. Yes, nothing but a peasant lad dancing with a girl, and there's an old woman who is cross about it, and here is a house out of the door of which someone is coming with a pail of water. Yes, that is all--a mere nothing of course, but there in the background you see, is the whole world, blue mountains, green towns, the clouded sky above, and near it a tourney--ha! ha!--in a certain sense perhaps it is out of place, but, on the other hand, in a certain sense it may be said to be appropriate. Since everything has a background and it is therefore perfectly right that here, directly behind the peasant's house, the world should begin with its tourneys, and its mountains, its rivers, its fortresses, its vineyards and its forests." He pointed out the various parts of the picture to which he was referring with a little ivory paper-knife. "Do you like it?" he continued. "The original also hangs in the Gallery in Vienna. You must have seen it." "Oh, but it is now six years since I lived in Vienna, and for many years before that I had not paid a visit to the museum." "Indeed? I have often walked round the galleries there, and stood before this picture, too. Yes, in those earlier days I _walked_." He was almost laughing as he looked at her, and; her embarrassment was such that she could not make any reply. "I fear I am boring you with the pictures," Herr Rupius went on abruptly. "Wait a little; my wife will be home soon. You know, I suppose, that she always goes for a two hours walk after dinner now. She is afraid of becoming too stout." "Your wife looks as young and slender as ... well, I don't think she has altered in the very least since I have come to live here." Bertha felt as though Rupius' countenance had grown quite rigid. Then suddenly he said, in a gentle tone of voice which was not by any means in keeping with the expression of his face: "A quiet life in a little town such as this keeps me young, of course. It was a clever idea of mine and hers, for it occurred simultaneously to both of us, to move here. Who can say whether, had we stayed in Vienna, it might not have been all over already?"