For the rest, never a week passed without Frau Doerr's coming all the long distance from the Zoological Garden to the Luise Bank, simply "to see how everything was going on." During these visits she talked, after the manner of Berlin wives, exclusively about her husband, and always in a tone which implied that her marriage to him had been one of the most dreadful misalliances and really half inexplicable. In fact, however, she was extremely comfortable and contented, and was actually glad that Doerr had his peculiarities. For she reaped only advantages from them, first, to grow richer all the time, and second (an advantage which she valued quite as highly) without any danger of change or loss of property she could continually hold herself superior to the old miser and reproach him for his niggardly ways. So Doerr was the principal theme of these conversations and Lena, unless she was at Goldstein's or somewhere else in town, always laughed heartily with the others, all the more so because she, as well as Frau Nimptsch, had visibly improved in health since they had moved. The moving in, buying and placing of house furnishings had, as one may imagine, led her away from her own thoughts from the beginning and what was still more helpful and important for her health and the recovery of her spirits was that she no longer needed to fear a meeting with Botho. Who came away out to the Luise Bank? Certainly not Botho. All this combined to make her seem comparatively fresh and cheerful again, and only one outward sign remained of the struggles she had been through: in the midst of her long hair there was one white strand. Mother Nimptsch either did not notice this or did not think much about it, but Frau Doerr, who in her own way followed the fashions and was uncommonly proud of her own braid of hair, noticed the white lock at once and said: "Good Lord, Lena. And right on the left side. But naturally ... that is where the trouble is ... it would have to be on the left."