Katherine sat between Wedell and Balafre and did not look as if she were in need of the Schlangenbad or any other water cure in the world. She had color, laughed, asked a hundred questions and when the person of whom she had asked the question started to speak, she contented herself with a minimum in the way of reply. In fact she led the conversation, and no one was offended with her, because she was a past mistress in the art of pleasing small talk. Balafre asked how she pictured her life at the water cure. Schlangenbad was renowned not only for its wonderful cures but also for its monotony, and four weeks of monotony at a health resort would be a good deal even under the most favorable circumstances. "Oh, dear Balafre," said Katherine, "you ought not to frighten me, and you would not if you knew how much Botho has done for me. He has got me eight novels though, to be sure, he put them in the bottom layer of my trunk; and in order that my imagination should not be prejudiced against water cures, he put in also a book about scientific fish culture." Balafre laughed. "Yes, you laugh, my dear friend, and yet you know only the lesser half, for the larger half (Botho, you know, never does anything without weighty reason) is his motives. Of course, what I just said about the pamphlet on fish culture being meant to prevent my taking a prejudice against the water cure was only a joke. The serious side of the matter is simply this, that I must actually read the pamphlet, and that from local patriotism, for Neumark, your happy home as well as mine, has been for a long time the birth and breeding place of scientific fish culture, and if I knew nothing of this new factor of food production, so important nationally and economically, I should never dare to show myself again on the further side of the Oder in the Landsbergerkreise, much less, however, in Verneuchen, at my Cousin Borne's." Botho started to speak, but she cut him off and went on: "I know what you were going to say, that the eight novels were only put in 'in case of emergency.' But I think there are not likely to be any 'emergencies.' Only yesterday I had a letter from my sister Ina, who wrote me that Anna Graevenitz has already been there for a week. You know her, Wedell; she was a Miss Rohr, a charming blonde. We were together at old Frau Zuelow's Pension, and we were even in the same class. And I remember how we both adored our divine Felix Bachmann, and even wrote verses, until good old Zuelow said that she forbade any such nonsense. And Elly Winterfield, as Ina writes me, is apparently coming too. And now I say to myself, in company with two charming young women--and I myself for the third, even if I cannot be compared with the others--in such good company, I say, one must surely be able to live. Don't you think so, dear Balafre?"