"I am delighted to see you," she said, just as one dowager receives another when she pays her a formal visit. In fact, Hertha felt intimidated. "What were you reading?" she asked, picking up the brown-and-gold book from the floor. The little wife blushed hotly, and hurriedly took the book out of her hand, but not before Hertha had deciphered the gold letters on the back: "Ammon's Duties of Mothers." "I never!" said Hertha. "May you read that?" "I must read it," replied the young wife, with a slightly ironical twist of her mouth. Hertha burned on the spot to gallop through the remarkable volume. She would have liked above all things to have laid it on her lap and asked her friend to leave her in peace for an hour or two. But she was too embarrassed to give any hint of her wishes. "What shall we have with our coffee?" asked Meta, momentarily anxious to display her authority as mistress of the house. "Meringues, jam pancakes, or apple-fritters?" "Can you really order anything you like?" asked Hertha, full of admiring envy. At this moment she could almost have made up her mind to accept a husband who was not Leo. "Naturally I can order what I like," replied her friend, with a melancholy little shake of the head. Bui; she might have truthfully added, "That is, when Hans's mamma has a bilious attack." "Well, then, I should like apple-fritters best!" exclaimed Hertha, with a sigh of relief, for now they seemed to be getting a more human footing. As she threw her hat and cloak in a corner, she caught sight of a pair of pouter pigeons fluttering from the ceiling, holding a corner of the bed-canopy in their half-open bills. "Oh, how perfectly heavenly!" she cried. "If I were married and might have everything I wanted, I would hang a gold cage up there with a nightingale in it, to sing me to sleep every night." Her friend made no answer, but she smiled. And this smile, indulgent and sad, in which there lay worlds of profound knowledge, told Hertha that she had said something extraordinarily stupid. She rubbed her nose in her confusion, then drew herself erect again, for it seemed to her necessary to recapture her dignity. A further survey of the room revealed new wonders at every turn. On the toilette table, which, like the bed, had a canopy of silken gauze draped above it, was an array of brushes, bottles, round and square boxes, all made of the same lapis lazuli glass. She took out stoppers and lifted covers enviously. In one of the boxes she found a powder-puff. It was the first time in all her young life that she had held a powder-puff in her hand. "May you powder too?" she asked. Meta shook her head, laughing. "I might if I liked," she said, "but I don't." Hertha felt a burning desire to guide the white soft ball of down over her face, but forebore from exposing her vanity before her friend. "I suppose that you are very, very happy?" she asked.