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is even the name of a great actor. 'Eckhof' is proper. . . . You mention only your father. Your mother, then, could she . . ."

"Yes, my mother died when I was still quite young."

"Ah. But tell me more about yourself, may I ask? But not if it tires you. If it tires you, you must rest, and I will go on telling you about Paris. But you could speak softly, yes, even if you whisper . . . that would only make everything the lovelier. . . . You were born in Bremen?" He put this question almost inaudibly, with an expression of worship and significance, as though there were no other city in the world like Bremen; as though Bremen were a city full of unmentionable adventures and speechless beauties, and to be born there gave one a vague majesty.

"Yes, just think!" she said involuntarily. "I come from Bremen."

"I was there once," he remarked thoughtfully.

"Great heavens, you were there, too! Herr Spinell, I believe you have seen everything from Tunis to Spitzbergen!"

"Yes, I was there once," he repeated. "A few short hours in the evening. I remember an old, narrow street, with a strange moon lying straight above the roofs of the houses. Then I was in a Rathskeller that smelt of wine and must. It is an insistent memory . . ."

"Indeed? Just where could that have been? . . . Yes, I was born in just such a one of those dark, gabled houses . . . in the home of one of the old merchant families, with its reverberating hall and white lacquered portico."

"Then your father is a merchant?" he asked a bit falteringly.

"Yes. But besides that, and first of all, he is an artist."

"Ah! Ah! And to what extent?"

"He plays the violin. But that does not mean much. It is the way he plays it, Herr Spinell, that is important! I have never been able to hear certain notes without feeling the tears burn marvellously in my eyes . . . it is something that I experience in no other way. But you do not believe . . ."

"I do believe! Ah, as if I could doubt! But tell me: your family is quite old? Many generations have already lived, worked, and died in that dark, gabled house?"

"Yes. But why do you ask that?"

"Because it often happens that a race with dry, practical bourgeois traditions finds itself again towards the end of its days in art."