Ditlinde received her brother in a large drawing-room on the first floor with several curved sofas in pale green silk; the back part of the room was separated from the front by slender pillars, and filled with palms, plants in metal bowls, and tables covered with brilliant flowers.
“Good afternoon, Klaus Heinrich,” said the Princess. She was delicate and thin, and the only luxuriant thing about her was her fair hair, which used to lie like ram's horns round her ears and now was dressed in thick plaits above her face with its high Grimmburg cheek-bones. She wore an indoor dress of soft blue-grey stuff with a white lace collar, cut in a point like a breast-plate and fastened at the waist with an old-fashioned oval brooch. Blue veins and shadows showed here and there through the delicate skin of her face, in the temples, the forehead, at the corners of her soft and calm blue eyes. Signs of approaching maternity were beginning to show themselves.
“Good afternoon, Ditlinde, you and your flowers!” answered Klaus Heinrich, as, clapping his heels together, he bent over her little, white, rather over-broad hand. “How they do smell! And the garden's full of them, I see.”
“Yes,” she said, “I love flowers. I have always longed to be able to live among quantities of flowers, living, smelling flowers, which I could watch growing—it was a kind of secret wish of mine, Klaus Heinrich, and I might almost say that I married for flowers, for in the Old Schloss, as you know, there were no flowers…. The Old Schloss and flowers! We should have had to rummage a lot to find them, I'm sure. Rat-traps and such things, plenty of them. And really, when one comes to think, the whole thing was like a disused rat-trap, so dusty and horrid … ugh!…”
“But the rose-bush, Ditlinde.”
“Yes, my goodness—one rose-bush. And that's in the guide-books, because its roses smell of decay. And the books say that it will one day smell quite natural and nice, just like any other rose. But I can't believe it.”
“You will soon,” he said, and looked at her laughingly, “have something better than your flowers to tend, little Ditlinde.”
“Yes,” she said and blushed lightly and quickly, “yes, Klaus Heinrich, I can hardly believe it. And yet it will be so, if God pleases. But come over here. We'll have a chat together once more….”
The room, on whose threshold they had been talking, was small in comparison with its height, with a grey-blue carpet, and furnished with cheery-looking silver-grey furniture, the chairs of which were upholstered in blue silk. A milk-white china chandelier hung from the white-festooned centre of the ceiling, and the walls were adorned with oil paintings of various sizes, acquisitions of Prince Philipp's, light studies in the new style, representing white goats in the sun, poultry in the sun, sun-bathed meadows and peasants with blinking, sun-sprinkled faces.
The spindle-legged secretaire in the white-curtained window was covered with a hundred carefully arranged articles, knick-knacks, writing materials, and several dainty note-blocks—for the Princess was accustomed to make careful and comprehensive notes about all her duties and plans. In front of the inkstand a housekeeper's book, in which Ditlinde had apparently just been working, lay open, and by the table there hung on the wall a little silk-trimmed block-calendar, under the printed date of which could be seen the pencil note: “5 o'clock: my brothers.” Between the sofa and a semicircle of chairs over against the white swing doors into the reception room stood an oval table with a damask cloth and blue-silk border; the flowered tea-service, a jam-pot, long dishes of sweet cakes, and tiny pieces of bread and butter were arranged in ordered disorder on it, and to one side steamed the silver tea-kettle over its spirit-flame on a glass table. But there were flowers everywhere—flowers in the vases on the writing-table, on the tea-table, on the glass table, on the china-cabinet, on the table next the white sofa, and a flower-table full of flower-pots stood in the window.