“It must be very interesting for you, gnädige Frau, to be able to watch... of course this is a _very fine house_. There was a lady from the Spanish Court here in the summer; she had a liver. We often spoke together.” I looked gratified and humble. “Now, in England, in your ‘boarding ’ouse’, one does not find the First Class, as in Germany.” “No, indeed,” I replied, still hypnotised by the Baron, who looked like a little yellow silkworm. “The Baron comes every year,” went on the Herr Oberlehrer, “for his nerves. He has never spoken to any of the guests—_yet_.” A smile crossed his face. I seemed to see his visions of some splendid upheaval of that silence—a dazzling exchange of courtesies in a dim future, a splendid sacrifice of a newspaper to this Exalted One, a “danke schön” to be handed down to future generations. At that moment the postman, looking like a German army officer, came in with the mail. He threw my letters into my milk pudding, and then turned to a waitress and whispered. She retired hastily. The manager of the pension came in with a little tray. A picture post card was deposited on it, and reverently bowing his head, the manager of the pension carried it to the Baron. Myself, I felt disappointed that there was not a salute of twenty-five guns. At the end of the meal we were served with coffee. I noticed the Baron took three lumps of sugar, putting two in his cup and wrapping up the third in a corner of his pocket-handkerchief. He was always the first to enter the dining-room and the last to leave; and in a vacant chair beside him he placed a little black leather bag. In the afternoon, leaning from my window, I saw him pass down the street, walking tremulously and carrying the bag. Each time he passed a lamp-post he shrank a little, as though expecting it to strike him, or maybe the sense of plebeian contamination.... I wondered where he was going, and why he carried the bag. Never had I seen him at the Casino or the Bath Establishment. He looked forlorn, his feet slipped in his sandals. I found myself pitying the Baron. That evening a party of us were gathered in the salon discussing the day’s “kur” with feverish animation. The Frau Oberregierungsrat sat by me knitting a shawl for her youngest of nine daughters, who was in that very interesting, frail condition.... “But it is bound to be quite satisfactory,” she said to me. “The dear married a banker—the desire of her life.” There must have been eight or ten of us gathered together, we who were married exchanging confidences as to the underclothing and peculiar characteristics of our husbands, the unmarried discussing the over-clothing and peculiar fascinations of Possible Ones. “I knit them myself,” I heard the Frau Lehrer cry, “of thick grey wool. He wears one a month, with two soft collars.” “And then,” whispered Fräulein Lisa, “he said to me, ‘Indeed you please me. I shall, perhaps, write to your mother.’”