the
recollection of last evening that Frauelein Linda's dimpled hand might be
an eminently pleasant thing to hold. Thus gradually she was won from the
Lombard runes to more personal interests, and as in the slow progress
towards the station they neared a bridge, Hauptmann divined the spot
where the East Germanic hypothesis lately in peril of death might receive
an indefinite reprieve.

He found Linda, as he now called her, neither disinclined to sit on the
parapet nor to receive the support of his arm. Her chatter had dwindled
to sighs and exclamations. He felt the need of a competing sound as the
chug of the spearhead in the ditch should announce the discomfiture of
the West Germans. But before committing the telltale runes to this
ditch, Hauptmann scanned it carefully over Linda's curly head, and
considered thoughtfully its worthiness to receive so important a
deposit. The survey could not have been more reassuring. Like so many of
the main irrigating ditches that carry the water of Father Po and his
tributaries to the lower fields, the sluggish stream consisted equally
of water, weeds, and ooze. No Lombard or other object held in that
mixture was likely soon to be found. There was a moment of tense silence
and then a single plucking sound which various eavesdroppers might have
located at the surface of the ditch or near Linda's plump left cheek.
Neither guess would have been wrong, for if she sighed once more it was
not for the vanishing Lombard runes.

Frauelein Linda Goeritz is, if something of a sentimentalist, also a bit of
an analyst, and when, in the train, she learned that the spearhead was
lost she accepted Hauptmann's cheerful comment with a certain scepticism.
He insisted with a suspicious vivacity that it didn't matter, that indeed
he preferred to have the merely professional reminiscence eliminated from
an experience that had personally moved him so deeply. To this reading of
the affair she naturally could not object, but as she gave him her hand
quite formally for farewell, she said: "To-night you have forgotten the
runes, tomorrow you forget me, nicht wahr? You are wrong. Them you will
not find again: there are many of me. You should have forgotten me
first." She escaped while a protest was on his lips.

Since that evening Frauelein Goeritz has followed Professor Hauptmann's
brilliant career with a certain interest and perplexity. He has ceased to
be an Extraordinarius, but his promotion was based on