Frau Kaethe Gregorovius overtook her husband on the path of their villa.

“How was Nicole?” she asked mildly; but she spoke out of breath, giving away the fact that she had held the question in her mind during her run.

Franz looked at her in surprise.

“Nicole’s not sick. What makes you ask, dearest one?”

“You see her so much — I thought she must be sick.”

“We will talk of this in the house.”

Kaethe agreed meekly. His study was over in the administration building and the children were with their tutor in the living-room; they went up to the bedroom.

“Excuse me, Franz,” said Kaethe before he could speak. “Excuse me, dear, I had no right to say that. I know my obligations and I am proud of them. But there is a bad feeling between Nicole and me.”

“Birds in their little nests agree,” Franz thundered. Finding the tone inappropriate to the sentiment he repeated his command in the spaced and considered rhythm with which his old master, Doctor Dohmler, could cast significance on the tritest platitude. “Birds — in — their — nests — AGREE!”

“I realize that. You haven’t seen me fail in courtesy toward Nicole.”

“I see you failing in common sense. Nicole is half a patient — she will possibly remain something of a patient all her life. In the absence of Dick I am responsible.” He hesitated; sometimes as a quiet joke he tried to keep news from Kaethe. “There was a cable from Rome this morning. Dick has had grippe and is starting home to-morrow.”

Relieved, Kaethe pursued her course in a less personal tone:

“I think Nicole is less sick than any one thinks — she only cherishes her illness as an instrument of power. She ought to be in the cinema, like your Norma Talmadge — that’s where all American women would be happy.”

“Are you jealous of Norma Talmadge, on a film?”

“I don’t like Americans. They’re selfish, SELF-ish!”

“You like Dick?”

“I like him,” she admitted. “He’s different, he thinks of others.”

— And so does Norma Talmadge, Franz said to himself. Norma Talmadge must be a fine, noble woman beyond her loveliness. They must compel her to play foolish r?les; Norma Talmadge must be a woman whom it would be a great privilege to know.

Kaethe had forgotten about Norma Talmadge, a vivid shadow that she had fretted bitterly upon one night as they were driving home from the movies in Zurich.

“— Dick married Nicole for her money,” she said. “That was his weakness — you hinted as much yourself one night.”

“You’re being malicious.”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she retracted. “We must all live together like birds, as you say. But it’s difficult when Nicole acts as — when Nicole pulls herself back a little, as if she were holding her breath — as if I SMELT bad!”

Kaethe had touched a material truth. She did most of her work herself, and, frugal, she bought few clothes. An American shopgirl, laundering two changes of underwear every night, would have noticed a hint of yesterday’s reawakened sweat about Kaethe’s person, less a smell than an ammoniacal reminder of the et............