places there was not a single genuine piece among the many objects offered for sale, but that all were imitations, while he, satisfying himself with a smaller number, offered his guests only things undoubtedly genuine. For he acquired no articles which he himself had not seen brought to the light of day, and, in the course of his eloquence, he revealed that he had also been present when they had found near the Forum the young lovers who had clasped each other in firm embrace when they realized their inevitable destruction, and had thus awaited death. Norbert had already heard of this discovery, but had shrugged his shoulders about it as a fabulous invention of some especially imaginative narrator, and he did so now, too, when the host brought in to him, as authentic proof, a metal brooch encrusted with green patina, which, in his presence, had been gathered with the remains of the girl from the ashes. When the arrival at the “Sun Hotel” took it in his own hand, however, the power of imagination exercised such ascendency over him that suddenly, without further critical consideration, he paid for it the price asked from English people, and, with his acquisition, hastily left the “Albergo del Sole,” in which, after another turn, he saw in an open window, nodding down, an asphodel branch covered with white blossoms, which had been placed in a water-glass; and without needing any logical connection, it rushed through his mind, at the sight of the grave-flower, that it was an attestation of the genuineness of his new possession. This he viewed with mingled feelings of excitement and shyness, keeping now to the way along the city-wall to Porta Marina. Then it was no fairy tale that a couple of young lovers had been excavated near the Forum in such an embrace, and there at the Apollo temple he had seen Gradiva lie down to sleep, but only in a dream; that he knew now quite definitely; in reality she might have gone on still farther from the Forum, met some one and died with him. From the green brooch between his fingers a feeling passed through him that it had belonged to Zoë-Gradiva, and had held her dress closed at the throat. Then she was the beloved fiancée, perhaps the young wife of him with whom she had wished to die. It occurred to Norbert Hanold to hurl the brooch away. It burned his fingers as if it had become glowing, or more exactly, it caused him the pain such as he had felt at the idea that he might put his hand on that of Gradiva and encounter only empty air.