“They usually do, especially in spring when the sun begins to seem warm again. In that house lives my father, Richard Bertgang, professor of zoology.” Norbert Hanold’s eyes opened to a width never before attained by them, and then he said, “Bertgang—then are you—are you—Miss Zoë Bertgang? But she looked quite different——” The two dangling feet began again to swing a little, and Miss Zoë Bertgang said in reply, “If you find that form of address more suitable between us, I can use it too, you know, but the other came to me more naturally. I don’t know whether I looked different when we used to run about before with each other as friends every day, and occasionally beat and cuffed each other, for a change, but if, in recent years, you had favoured me with even one glance, you might perhaps have seen that I have looked like this for a long time.—No, now, as they say, it’s pouring pitchforks; you won’t have a dry stitch.” Not only had the feet of the speaker indicated a return of impatience, or whatever it might be, but also in the tones of her voice there appeared a little didactic, ill-humoured curtness, and Norbert had thereby been overwhelmed by a feeling that he was running the risk of slipping into the rôle of a big school-boy scolded and slapped in the face. That caused him to again seek mechanically for an exit between the pillars, and to the movement which showed this impulse Miss Zoë’s last utterance, indifferently added, had reference; and, of course, in an undeniably striking way, because for what was now occurring outside of the shelter, “pouring” was really a mild term. A tropical cloudburst such as only seldom took pity on the summer thirst of the meadows of the Campagna, was shooting vertically and rushing as if the Tyrrhenian Sea were pouring from heaven upon the Villa of Diomede, and yet it continued like a firm wall composed of billions of drops gleaming like pearls and large as nuts. That, indeed, made escape out into the open air impossible, and forced Norbert Hanold to remain in the school-room of the portico while the young school-mistress with the delicate, clever face made use of the hindrance for further extension of her pedagogical discussion by continuing, after a brief pause:—