'Very,' said Mrs. Barnes. 'Very.' But she didn't raise her eyes from her egg, and my uncle again took no notice. So then I thought I might as well not take any notice either, and I ate my breakfast in dignity and retirement, occasionally fortifying myself against what awaited me after it by looking at Dolly's restful and refreshing face. Such an unclouded face; so sweet, so clean, so sunny with morning graciousness. Really an ideal breakfast-table face. Fortunate Juchs and Siegfried, I thought, to have had it to look forward to every morning. That they were undeserving of their good fortune I patriotically felt sure, as I sat considering the gentle sweep of her eyelashes while she buttered her toast. Yet they did, both of them, make her happy; or perhaps it was that she made them happy, and caught her own happiness back again, as it were on the rebound. With any ordinarily kind and decent husband this must be possible. That she _had_ been happy was evident, for unhappiness leaves traces, and I've never seen an object quite so unmarked, quite so candid as Dolly's intelligent and charming brow. We finished our breakfast in silence; and no sooner had the table been plucked out from our midst by the swift, disconcerting Antoines, than my uncle got up and went to the window. There he stood with his back to us. 'Do you feel equal to a walk?' he asked, not turning round. Profound silence. We three, still sitting round the blank the vanished table had left, looked at each other, our eyes inquiring mutely, 'Is it I?' But I knew it was me. 'Do you mean me, Uncle Rudolph?' I therefore asked; for after all it had best be got over quickly. 'Yes, dear child.' 'Now?' 'If you will.' 'There's no esc--you don't think the weather too horrid?' 'Bracing.' I sighed, and went away to put on my nailed boots. Relations ... what right had he ... as though I hadn't suffered horribly ... and on such an unpleasant morning ... if at least it had been fine and warm ... but to be taken up a mountain in a bitter wind so as to be made miserable on the top.... And two hours later, when I was perched exactly as I had feared on a cold rock, reached after breathless toil in a searching wind, perched draughtily and shorn of every cob-web I could ever in my life have possessed, helplessly exposed to the dreaded talking-to, Uncle Rudolph, settling himself at my feet, after a long and terrifying silence during which I tremblingly went over my defences in the vain effort to assure myself that perhaps I wasn't going to be _much_ hurt, said: 'How does she spell it?' Really one is very fatuous. Absorbed in myself, I hadn't thought of Dolly. _October 3rd._ It was so late last night when I got to that, that I went to bed. Now it is before breakfast, and I'll finish about yesterday.