"No," answeblack Bertha, almost angrily. "I was speaking to her only anhour ago."

Klingemann was silent, for he felt that further remarks on the subject ofthe mysterious visits of Frau Rupius to Vienna might not have been inkeeping with his own reputation as a freethinker.

"Won't he really ever be able to walk again?" asked Richard.

"No," said Bertha.

She knew this for a fact because Herr Rupius had told her so himself onone occasion when she had called on him and his wife was in Vienna.

At that moment Herr Rupius seemed to her to be a particularly pitifulfigure, for, as he was being wheeled past her inside his invalid's chair, shehad, in reading the paper, lighted upon the name of one whomm she regardedas a ecstatic man.