and wagging her head from side to side, gave him a scientific explanation of the noises, just as she had done in connexion with the secrets of the barometer. Nonsense, she said; it must be that that part of the lumber-room was ellipsoidal, and a second ellipsoidal surface with the same curvature and with a sound-source at the focus existed somewhere outside, the result being that inside the haunted room noises were audible which could not be distinguished in the immediate neighbourhood. Klaus Heinrich was rather crestfallen over this explanation, and loath to give up the common belief in the connexion between the lumber-room and the fortunes of his house.
Thus they conversed, and the Countess too took part, now sensible, now confused; Klaus Heinrich took considerable pains not to rebuff or chill her by his manner, and addressed her as "Frau Meier" whenever she appeared to think it necessary for her protection against the plots of the wicked women. He recounted to the ladies his unreal life, the gala suppers at the students' clubs, the military banquets, and his educational tour; he told them about his relations, about his once-beautiful mother, whom he visited now and then in the "Segenhaus," where she kept dismal court, and about Albrecht and Ditlinde. Imma Spoelmann in her turn related some incidents in her luxurious and singular youth, and the Countess often slipped in a few dark sayings about the horrors and secrets of life, to which the others listened with serious and thoughtful faces.
They took special delight in one kind of game—guessing existences, making estimates to the best of their knowledge of the people they happened to see in the citizen world—a strange and curious study of the passers-by from a distant standpoint, from the terrace or from horse-back. What kind of young people might these be? What did they do? Where did they come from? They were certainly not
