"I would with pleasure take her to Zehrendorf," I said; "but now it is winter; and how can I possibly leave here?"
"Well, as it is an impossibility, we will not rack our brains any more about it," replied the doctor. "We must do the best we can. Sometimes mental activity may, to a certain point, make up for the deficiency of physical. It is a pity that your wife was so soon satiated with the bustle of society. Why do you not take her sometimes to the theatre or the opera? She is so great a lover of music."
"I do not care to go to the opera any more," said Hermine, after we had tried it a few times. "They sing badly and play worse. Now could you call that a Zerlina? And that Don Juan! You might have waited for me long enough, if you had been such a stick of a lover as that! And with such monstrous self-conceit to boot! Masetto was really the better man."
"Try the theatre once," said the doctor.
I looked him full in the eyes.
"The Bellini has been back a week," he added, and brought his round spectacles to bear upon me. We looked at each other awhile in silence.
"Your wife does not know that Fräulein Bellini and a certain other lady are one and the same person?" he presently asked.
"No," I answered.
"And you are not willing to tell her? Not willing to tell her what I know, who am your friend, and what very probably others know, who are not your friends?"
"It is a peculiar sort of thing, doctor."