At one blow with the last word the former picture changed before Norbert Hanold’s eyes, for the old wall-ruin lay there empty, because the girl, who had chosen it as a seat, teacher’s chair and pulpit, had come down, or really flown, and with the same supple buoyancy as that of a wagtail swinging through the air, so that she already stood again on Gradiva-feet, before his glance had consciously caught up with her descent; and continuing her speech directly, she said, “Well, the rain has stopped; too severe rulers do not reign long. That is reasonable, too, you know, and thus everything has again become reasonable. I, not least of all, and you can look up Gisa Hartleben, or whatever new name she has, to be of scientific assistance to her about the purpose of her stay in Pompeii. I must now go to the ‘Albergo del Sole,’ for my father is probably waiting for me already at lunch. Perhaps we shall meet again sometime at a party in Germany or on the moon. Addio!” Zoë Bertgang said this in the absolutely polite, but also equally indifferent tone of a most well-bred young lady, and, as was her custom, placing her left foot forward, raised the sole of the right almost perpendicularly to pass out. As she lifted her dress slightly with her left hand, because of the thoroughly wet ground outside, the resemblance to Gradiva was perfect and the man, standing hardly more than two arm-lengths away, noticed for the first time a quite insignificant deviation in the living picture from the stone one. The latter lacked something possessed by the former, which appeared at the moment quite clear, a little dimple in her cheek, which produced a slight, indefinable effect. It puckered and wrinkled a little and could therefore express annoyance or a suppressed impulse to laugh, possibly both together. Norbert Hanold looked at it and although from the evidence just presented to him he had completely regained his reason, his eyes had to again submit to an optical illusion. For, in a tone triumphing peculiarly over his discovery, he cried out, “There is the fly again!” It sounded so strange that from the incomprehending listener, who could not see herself, escaped the question, “The fly—where?”