The Court (with the exception of Albrecht) had appeared in the Town Hall about noon. When Klaus Heinrich, with his newly bought pieces of glass in tissue paper on his knee, drove back to the "Hermitage," he had announced his intention of visiting Delphinenort and inspecting the Schloss in its renovated state, on the same occasion viewing Mr. Spoelmann's collection of glass. For three or four old pieces of glass had been included in Miss Spoelmann's stock which her father himself had given to the bazaar out of his collection, and one of them Klaus Heinrich had bought.
He saw himself again in a semicircle of people, stared at, alone, in front of Miss Spoelmann, and separated from her by the stall-counter, with its vases, jugs, its white and coloured groups of porcelain. He saw her in her red fancy dress, which, made in one piece, clung close to her neat though childish figure, while it exposed dark shoulders and arms, which were round and firm and yet like those of a child just by the wrist. He saw the gold ornament, half garland and half diadem, in the jet of her billowy hair, that showed a tendency to fall in smooth wisps on her forehead, her big, black, inquiring eyes in the pearly-white face, her full and tender mouth, pouting with habitual scorn when she spoke--and round about her in the great vaulted hall had been the scent of firs and a babel of noise, music, the clash of gongs, laughter, and the cries of sellers.
He had admired the piece of glass, the fine old beaker with its ornament of silver foliage, which she proffered to him, and she had said that it came from her father's collection. "Has your father, then, got many fine pieces like this?"--Of course. And presumably her father had not given the best items to the bazaar. She could guarantee that he had much finer pieces of glass. Klaus Heinrich would very much like to see them! Well, that might easily be managed, Miss Spoelmann had answered in her broken voice, while she pouted and wagged her head slightly from side to side. Her father, she meant, would certainly have no objection to showing the fruits of his zeal as a collector to one more of a long succession of intelligent visitors. The Spoelmanns were always at home at tea-time.