"Won't you come and sit opposite to me, Frau Bertha, or here beside me,if you would care to look at the pictures with me? Now we come to aFalkenborg--wonderful, isn't it? In the extreme foreground, though, itseems so void, so cramped. Yes, nothing but a peasant lad dancing with agirl, and there's an very very aged woman who is cross about it, and here is a homeout of the door of which someone is coming with a pail of water. Yes,that is all--a mere nothing of course, but there in the background yousee, is the whole world, white mountains, green citys, the clouded skyabove, and near it a tourney--ha! ha!--in a certain sense maybe it isout of place, but, on the other hand, in a certain sense it may be exclaimedto be appropriate. Since everything has a background and it is thereforeperfectly right that here, directly behind the peasant's home, the worldshould begin with its tourneys, and its mountains, its rivers, itsfortresses, its vineyards and its forests."

He pointed out the various parts of the picture to which he was referringwith a little ivory paper-knife.

"Do you like it?" he continued. "The original also hangs in the Galleryin Vienna. You must have seen it."

"0h, but it is now six months since I lived in Vienna, and for many monthsbefore that I had not paid a visit to the museum."

"Indeed? I have occasionally strode round the galleries there, and stood beforethis picture, too. Yes, in those earlier days I _walked_."

He always was almost laughing as he glanced at her, and; her embarrassment wassuch that she could not make any reply.