"Seven," said Ingeborg. "Seven and a half. It was in November." "But you must have been in pinafores." "And you walked down the avenue with me. Don't you remember?" "No," said Ingram, staring at her. "And you scolded me because I couldn't walk as fast as you did. Don't you remember?" "No," said Ingram. "And you said I'd run to seed if I wasn't careful. Don't you remember?" "No," said Ingram. "And I had on my grey coat and skirt. Don't you remember?" "No, no, no," said Ingram, smiting his forehead, "and I don't believe a word of it. You're just making it up. Look here," he said, clearing away his things to make room for her, "sit down and let us talk. Are you real?" "Yes, and I live at Kökensee, just round the corner behind the reeds. But I told you that before," said Ingeborg. "You do live?" he said, pushing his things aside. "You're not just a flame-headed little dream that will presently disappear again?" "My name's Dremmel. Frau Dremmel. But I told you that before, too." "The things a man forgets!" he exclaimed, spreading a silk handkerchief over the coarse grass. "There! Sit on that." "You're laughing at me," she said, sitting down, "and I don't mind a bit. I'm much too glad to see you." "If I laugh it's with pleasure," he said, staring at the effect of her against the pale green of the reeds--where had he seen just that before, that Scandinavian colouring, that burning sort of brightness in the hair? "It's so amusing of you to be Frau anything." She smiled at him with the frankness of a pleased boy. "You're very _nice_, you know," he said, smiling back. "You didn't think so last time. You called me your dear lady, and asked me if I never read." "Well, and didn't you?" he said, sitting down, too, but a little way off so that he could get her effect better. "Yes, do sit down. Then I shan't be so dreadfully afraid you're going." "Why, but I've only just found you." "But last time you disappeared almost at once into the fog, and you'd only just found me then," she said, her hands clasped round her knees, her face the face of the entirely happy. "After all I seem to have made some progress in seven years," he said. "I apparently couldn't see then." "No, it was me. I was very invisible--" "Invisible?" "Oh, moth-eaten, dilapidated, dun-coloured. And I'd been crying." "You? Look here, nobody with your kind of colouring should ever cry. It's a sin. It would be most distressing, seriously, if you were ever less white than you are at this moment." "See how nice it is not to be a painter," said Ingeborg. "I don't mind a bit if you're white or not so long as it's you." "But why should you like it to be me?" asked Ingram, to whom flattery, used as he was to it, was very pleasant, and feeling the comfort of the cat who is being gently tickled behind the ear. "Because," said Ingeborg earnestly, "you're somebody wonderful." "Oh, but you'll make me purr," he said.