When he arrived at the countess’s country-house, which was called the Villa Ophelia, he was told that the ladies had gone to the theatre. He was taken to the room that had been prepared for him. He washed, dressed for dinner, strolled back to the drawing-room, stuck his hands deep into his pockets like a shivering tramp, and dropped morosely into an easy chair. He heard the rain plash, and from another room the crying of an infant. “Aha,” he thought, in his vexation, “that is my grandchild, one of the twins. How do I know that some misguided creature won’t put it on my knee, and ask me to admire and pet and even kiss it? Who, I say, will protect me from a bourgeois idyl of that sort? You might expect anything of a woman like the countess. These sentimental actresses who refuse to grow old are capable of anything. Is there anything more annoying in the world than a baby? It is neither a human being nor an animal; it smells of cow-udders and scented powder, and makes an insufferable and repulsive noise. It pokes its limbs into the faces of older persons; and if there are two of them, and all these horrors assail one doubly, one is apt to be quite defenceless, and may fairly inquire: ‘What have you, Bernard Crammon, whose interest in the propagation of the race has always been strictly negative--what have you to do with such things?’” Crammon ended his reflections with a smile of self-mockery. At that moment he heard cheerful voices, and Letitia and the countess entered. He arose with exquisite chivalry. He was most friendly and most polished. He did not conceal his astonishment over Letitia’s appearance. His Austrian delight in feminine charm and his impulse to do homage to it scattered the fog of his egotistical vexation. Either, he thought, his memory was playing him false, or else Letitia had undergone a marvellous development since the days at Wahnschaffe Castle. Crude young girls had never, to be sure, attracted him. The women whom he admired and courted had to be rich in knowledge and responsible, for that eased his own responsibility. After the first greetings the countess spoke. “Dear people,” she said, with her North German readiness to meet all occasions, “I must leave you for half an hour now. A theatre is a grimy place. I must wash my hands. Everything about it is grimy--the seats, the spectators, the actors, and the play. It always gives me a yearning for soap and water. You can use the time to chat a bit. Afterwards we’ll have supper.” She rustled out, not without having cast a severe glance at Crammon. Crammon asked thoughtfully: “I wonder why she called this building the Villa Ophelia. There are many inexplicable things in life. This is one of them.”