the way Ritter told Frederick of a little country house
he was building for himself on Long Island. Frederick had already heard
of it through Willy Snyders. It was to be a rather pretentious building,
with gardens and stables and barns. Ritter was erecting it according to
his own ideas and plans. He discussed the beauties of the Doric column.
It was the most natural of column forms and therefore the most suitable
for any surroundings. That was why he had used it in his villa. For his
interiors, he had partly followed Pompeian models, and there was to be
an atrium. He spoke of a little figure, a gargoyle, which he intended to
place over a square fountain.

"In these things, which offer the jolliest possibilities, artists
nowadays are very unresourceful," he said. "We have naive German examples
in the _Gaensemaennchen_, the _Maennicken Piss_, and the _Tugendbrunnen_ in
Nuremberg. One of the best classic examples is the drunken Silenus of
Herculaneum. Water when combined as a mobile element with immobile works
of art, can run, trickle, dash, splash, spray, bubble up, or rise up in a
splendid jet. It can hiss and sputter and foam. From the drinking bottle
of the drunken Silenus in Herculaneum it must have popped. I have had a
plaster-cast model made of the little Pompeian figure of Narcissus at the
spring in Naples. It is exquisitely beautiful. I am going to place it
somewhere in my villa. My gardens will reach down to the seashore, and
I intend to have a landing-place for boats, with marble steps and
balustrades and sculpture work."

While walking in the cold sunny air next to the slim, elegantly dressed
sculptor, listening to his Greek fantasies, Frederick's heart beat
mightily against his ribs. Whenever the thought arose in his mind that
here, in this new country, after everything that had happened, he would
again see Ingigerd Hahlstroem dance her dance, he felt that he was no
longer equal to the trial. The forces of his soul that had remained
healthy were already rising in rebellion against anything that might
increase the power of the little demon. Nevertheless, he was so
intimately connected with her, that the public exhibition of her charms
tortured him, and he suffered from the anticipation of her great success.
Yet while dreading it, he fervently desired it.

The theatre was dark and empty when Ritter and his following entered.
They could scarcely see and had to grope their way after the young man
that led them t