Lola put her great arm round the little man’s neck and patted him like a child, while he sobbed as if his heart would break.

When he recovered he gave us the details of the tragic end of Santa Bianca, and wound up by calling down the most ingeniously complicated and passionate curses on the head of the murderer.  Lola Brandt strove to pacify him.

“We all have our sorrows, Anastasius.  Did I not lose my beautiful horse Sultan?”

The professor sprang to his full height of four feet and dashed away his tears with a noble gesture of his black-gloved hand.

Base slave that he was to think of his own petty bereavement in the face of her eternal affliction.  He turned to me and bade me mark her serene nobility.  It was a model and an example for him to follow.  He, too, would be brave and present a smiling face to evil fortune.

“Behold!  I smile, carissima!” he cried dramatically.

We beheld—­and saw his features (smudged with tearstains and the dye from the black gloves which he obviously wore out of respect for the deceased Santa Bianca) contorted into a grimace of hideous imbecility.

“Monsieur,” said he, assuming his natural expression which was one of pensive melancholy, “let us change the conversation.  You are a great statesman.  Will you kindly let me know your opinion on the foreign policy of Germany?”

Whereupon he sat down again upon his stool and regarded me with earnest attention.

“Germany,” said I, with the solemnity of a Sir Oracle in the smoking-room of one of the political clubs, “has dreams of an empire beyond her frontiers, and with a view to converting the dream into a reality, is turning out battleships nineteen to the dozen.”

The Professor nodded his head sagaciously, and looked up at Lola.

“Very profound,” said he, “very profound.  I shall remember it.  I am a Greek, Monsieur, and the Greeks, as you know, are a nation of diplomatists.”

“Ever since the days of Xenophon,” said I.

“You’re both too clever for me,” exclaimed our hostess.  “Where did you get your knowledge from, Anastasius?”

The Professor, flattered, passed his hand over his bulgy forehead.

“I was a great student in my youth,” said he.  “Once I could tell you all the kings of Rome and the date of the battle of Actium.  But pressure of weightier concerns has driven my erudition from me.  Pardon me.  I have not yet asked after your health.  You are looking sad and troubled.  What is the matter?”

He sat bolt upright, fingering his imperial and regarding her with the keen solicitude of a family physician.  To my amazement, Lola Brandt told him quite simply: 

“I am thinking of living with my husband again.”

“Has the traitor been annoying you?” he asked with a touch of fierceness.

“Oh, no!  It’s my own idea.  I’m tired of living alone.  I don’t even know where he is.”