Frau Ehrenberg sat with her knitting on the green velvet sofa in the raised bow-window. Opposite her Else was reading a book. The white head of the marble Isis gleamed from out the far dark part of the room behind the piano, while a streak of light from the next room played through the open door over the grey carpet. Else looked up from her book through the window to the high tops of the trees in the Schwarzenberg Park which were waving in the autumn wind and said casually: "We might perhaps ring up George Wergenthin, to know if he's coming this evening." Frau Ehrenberg let her knitting fall on her lap. "I don't know," she said. "You remember what a really charming condolence letter I wrote him and what a pressing invitation I gave him to come to Auhof. He didn't come and the coldness of his answer was quite marked. I wouldn't ring him up." "One shouldn't treat him like other people," answered Else. "He belongs to the people whom one has occasionally to remind that one is still alive. When he has been reminded he is extremely glad." Frau Ehrenberg went on with her knitting. "It really won't come to anything," she said quietly. "It's not meant to come to anything," retorted Else. "I thought you knew that by this time, mamma. We're good friends, nothing more--and even that only at intervals; or do you really think that I'm in love with him, mamma? Yes, when I was a little girl I was, in Nice, when we played tennis together, but that is long past." "Well--and Florence?" "In Florence--I was more in love with Felician." "And now?" asked Frau Ehrenberg slowly. "Now ... you're probably thinking of Heinrich Bermann ... but you're making a mistake, mother." "I prefer to be making a mistake. But this summer I really quite had the impression that----" "I tell you," interrupted Else a little impatiently, "it isn't anything and never was anything. On one solitary occasion, when we went out boating on a sultry afternoon, you saw us from your balcony with your opera-glasses, no doubt--it was only then that it became a little dangerous. And even supposing we had fallen on each other's neck--which as a matter of fact we never did--it wouldn't have meant anything. It was simply a summer flirtation." "And besides, he's supposed to be involved in a very serious love-affair," said Frau Ehrenberg. "You mean ... with that actress, mamma?" Frau Ehrenberg looked up. "Did he tell you anything about her?" "Tell...? Not in so many words, but when we went for walks together in the park or went out in the evening on the lake, why, he practically spoke of nothing but her--of course without mentioning her name ... and the better he liked me--men really are such awfully funny people--the more jealous he became about the other woman.... But if it were only that? What young man isn't involved in a serious love affair? Do you think by any chance, mamma, that George Wergenthin is not?"