Arriving at Meleager’s house, he is afraid that he may find Gradiva in the company of another man, and becomes so excited about it that he can find no other greeting for her than the question: “Are you alone?” With difficulty she makes him realize that he has picked the roses for her; he confesses to her the latest delusion, that she is the girl who was found in the Forum in her lover’s embrace and to whom the green brooch had belonged. Not without mockery, she inquires if he found the piece in the sun. The latter—here called “Sole”—brings to light many things of that sort. As cure for the dizziness which he admits, she proposes to him to share a lunch with her and offers him half of a piece of white bread wrapped in tissue paper; the other half of this she consumes with apparent appetite. Thereat her faultless teeth gleam between her lips and, in biting the crust, cause a slight crunching sound. To her remark, “It seems to me as if we had already eaten our bread thus together once two thousand years ago. Can’t you remember it?” (_G._ p. 88.) he cannot answer, but the strengthening of his mind by the nourishment, and all the evidences of present time in her do not fail to have effect on him. Reason stirs in him and makes him doubt the whole delusion that Gradiva is only a noonday ghost; on the other hand, there is the objection that she, herself, has just said that she had already shared her repast with him two thousand years ago. As a means of settling this conflict there occurs to him an experiment which he executes with slyness and restored courage. Her left hand, with its slender fingers, is resting on her knees, and one of the house-flies, about whose boldness and worthlessness he formerly became so indignant, alights on this hand. Suddenly Hanold’s hand rises and claps, with no gentle stroke, on the fly and on Gradiva’s hand. This bold experiment affords him twofold success: first the joyous conviction that he actually touched a really living, warm hand, then, however, a reprimand, before which he starts up in terror from his seat on the step. For from Gradiva’s lips come the words, after she has recovered from her amazement, “You are surely apparently crazy, Norbert Hanold.” Calling a person by name is recognized as the best method of awakening him, when he is sleeping, or of awakening a somnambulist. Unfortunately we are not permitted to observe the results, for Norbert Hanold, of Gradiva’s calling his name, which he had told to no one in Pompeii. For at this critical moment, the congenial lovers appear from the Casa del Fauno and the young lady calls, in a tone of pleasant surprise, “Zoë! You here, too? and also on your honeymoon? You have not written me a word about it, you know.” Before this new proof of the living reality of Gradiva, Hanold flees.