her dressing-gown together, and made room for him on the little green
bench.

"How cool you are looking," she said; "and if I may make the remark--what a
beautiful suit!"

"Surely I wore it last summer when you were here? I brought the silk from
China--smuggled it through the Russian customs by swathing it round my
body. And such a quantity: two dress lengths for my sister-in-law, three
suits for myself, a cloak for the housekeeper of my flat in Munich. How I
perspired! Every inch of it had to be washed afterwards."

"Surely you have had more adventures than any man in Germany. When I think
of the time that you spent in Turkey with a drunken guide who was bitten by
a mad dog and fell over a precipice into a field of attar of roses, I
lament that you have not written a book."

"Time--time. I am getting a few notes together. And now that you are here
we shall renew our quiet little talks after supper. Yes? It is necessary
and pleasant for a man to find relaxation in the company of women
occasionally."

"Indeed I realise that. Even here your life is too strenuous--you are so
sought after--so admired. It was just the same with my dear husband. He
was a tall, beautiful man, and sometimes in the evening he would come down
into the kitchen and say: 'Wife, I would like to be stupid for two
minutes.' Nothing rested him so much then as for me to stroke his head."

The Herr Rat's bald pate glistening in the sunlight seemed symbolical of
the sad absence of a wife.