The Villa of Diomede had, at one time, at least, been the inevitable goal of every dutiful Pompeii visitor, but now, at noon, in its rather roomy solitude, certainly no curiosity lingered in it, and therefore it had seemed to Norbert Hanold the place of refuge best suited to his newest mental needs. These longed most insistently for grave-like loneliness, breathless silence, and quiescent peace; against the latter, however, an impelling restlessness in his system raised counter-claims, and he had been obliged to force an agreement between the two demands, such that the mind tried to claim its own and yet gave the feet liberty to follow their impulse. So he had been wandering around through the portico since his entrance; he succeeded thus in preserving his bodily equilibrium, and he busied himself with changing his mental state into the same normal condition; that, however, seemed more difficult in execution than in intention; of course it seemed to his judgment unquestionable that he had been utterly foolish and irrational to believe that he had sat with a young Pompeiian girl, who had become more or less corporeally alive again, and this clear view of his madness formed incontestably an essential advance on the return to sound reason; but it was not yet restored entirely to normal condition, for, even if it had occurred to him that Gradiva was only a dead bas-relief, it was also equally beyond doubt that she was still alive. For that irrefutable proof was adduced; not he alone, but others also, saw her, knew that her name was Zoë and spoke with her, as with a being as much alive, in substance, as they. On the other hand, however, she knew his name too, and again, that could originate only from a supernatural power; this dual nature remained enigmatic even for the rays of understanding that were entering his mind. Yet to this incompatible duality there was joined a similar one in him, for he cherished the earnest desire to have been destroyed here in the Villa of Diomede two thousand years ago, in order that he might not run the risk of meeting Zoë-Gradiva again anywhere; at the same time, however, an extraordinary joyous feeling was stirring within him, because he was still alive and was therefore able to meet her again somewhere. To use a commonplace yet fitting simile, this was turning in his head like a mill-wheel, and through the long portico he ran around likewise without stopping, which did not aid him in the explanation of the contradictions. On the contrary, he was moved by an indefinite feeling that everything was growing darker and darker about and within him. Then he suddenly recoiled, as he turned one of the four corners of the colonnade. A half-dozen paces away from him there sat, rather high up on a fragmentary wall-ruin, one of the young girls who had found death here in the ashes.