The Rosners were at home. The housemaid showed George in. Anna was sitting opposite the door, she held a coffee-cup in her hand and her eyes were turned towards the newcomer. On her right her father was reading a paper and smoking a pipe. He was clean-shaven except for a pair of narrow grizzled whiskers on his cheeks. His thin hair of a strange greenish-grey hue was parted at the temples in front and looked like a badly-made wig. His eyes were watery and red-lidded. The stoutish mother, around whose forehead the memory of fairer years seemed as it were to hover, looked straight in front of her; her hands were contemplatively intertwined and rested on the table. Anna slowly put down her cup, nodded and smiled in silence. The two old people began to get up when George came in. "Please, don't trouble, please don't," said George. Then there was a noise from the wall at the side of the room. Josef, the son of the house, got up from the sofa on which he had been lying. "Charmed to see you, Herr Baron," he said in a very deep voice, and adjusted the turned-up collar of his yellow-check rather shabby lounge jacket. "And how have you been all this time, Herr Baron?" inquired the old man. He remained standing a gaunt and somewhat bowed figure, and refused to resume his seat until George had sat down. Josef pushed a chair between his father and sister, Anna held out her hand to the visitor. "We haven't seen one another for a long time," she said, and drank some of her coffee. "You've been going through a sad time," remarked Frau Rosner sympathetically. "Yes," added Herr Rosner. "We were extremely sorry to read of your great loss--and so far as we knew your father always enjoyed the best of health." He spoke very slowly all the time, as if he had still something more to say, stroking his head several times with his left hand, and nodded while he listened to the answer. "Yes, it came very unexpectedly," said George gently, and looked at the faded dark-red carpet at his feet. "A sudden death then, so to speak," remarked Herr Rosner and there was a general silence. George took a cigarette out of his case and offered one to Josef. "Much obliged," said Josef as he took the cigarette and bowed while he clicked his heels together without any apparent reason; while he was giving the Baron a light he thought the latter was looking at him, and said apologetically, with an even deeper voice than usual, "Office jacket." "Office jacket straight from the office," said Anna simply without looking at her brother. "The lady fancies she has the ironic gift," answered Josef merrily, but his manifest restraint indicated that under other conditions he would have expressed himself less agreeably. "Sympathy was universally felt," old Rosner began again. "I read an obituary in the _Neuen Freie Presse_ on your good father by Herr Hoffrat Kerner, if I remember rightly; it was highly laudatory. Science too has suffered a sad loss."