Photographs of her stood about everywhere in the Hofrat’s house; even oil portraits by his own amateur hand hung on the walls. Two children, a son and a daughter, had been born; then they had brought her up here, the fragile body already fever-smitten; a few months had seen the completion of the wasting-away process. Behrens, they said, had adored her. He was brought so low by the blow that he got very odd and melancholy; people saw him gesturing, sniggering, and talking to himself, on the street. He did not go back to his original place, but remained where he was⁠—in part, no doubt, because he could not tear himself away from her grave, but also for the less sentimental reason that he was himself in poor health and, in his own professional opinion, actually