They stopped before a pretty one-story house in the suburb, standing in the middle of a neatly-kept garden. Rosenbusch took his flute out of his pocket, and played the beginning of the air "Bei Männern, welche Liebe fühlen." But nothing stirred in the house, although the upper windows were only closed with blinds, and every note rang out far and clear in the hot noonday air. "Fat Rossel is either asleep or else he pretends he is, so as to shirk our high mass again," said the painter, putting up his flute. "I think we had better go on." "_Andiamo!_" said Angelica, nodding. (She had once passed a year in Italy, and certain everyday Italian phrases had a way of slipping involuntarily from her lips every minute or two.) The conversation, as they strolled on, was not exactly animated. Jansen seemed to be lost in thought; long silences were a habit of his, and, especially when there were several people about him, he could remain for hours apparently without the least interest in what was going on. And then, if something that was said happened to kindle a spark in him, his eloquence seemed all the more surprising. Felix knew him well, and made no attempt to disturb his abstracted mood. He looked about him as he walked, and tried to recognize the streets that he had first strolled through, long before, in one of his vacation journeys. Nor did Rosenbusch seem to be in a particularly talkative frame of mind; and only Angelica, who had a way of assuming a certain chaffing tone toward him, and besides was out of humor because, as she said, she had got "into a blind alley" with one of her pictures, kept up a fire of little sarcasms and ridicule against her neighbor. She even adopted the familiarity of calling him by his nickname, but not without putting a "Herr" before it. "Do you know, Herr Rosebud, when you're composing a picture, you ought to repeat your poems instead of playing the flute? I know it would inspire you a great deal more, and your neighbors would suffer less. Now, to-day, for instance, I put some carmine on a whole group of children I was painting, and spoiled it, just because that everlasting _adagio_ of yours had made me so sentimental." "Why didn't you pound on the door, then, my honored friend, as we agreed, and then I would have 'ceased my cruel sport?'" "If it hadn't been Sunday, and I hadn't said to myself it will soon be twelve o'clock, and then he'll stop anyhow--. But see that sweet little girl in the carriage--the one with the blue hat, next to the young man--it's a bridal couple, surely! What eyes she has! And how she laughs, and throws herself back in the carriage like a thoughtless child!" She had stopped in the street in her ecstasy, and impulsively imitated the gesture of the girl who was driving by, bending back and crossing her arms behind her head. The friends stood still and laughed.