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Rh attraction for her, for, though she had been so well sheltered and protected, nothing would shake her in her resolve to share her life with him. If one thinks it over, one can quite understand it."

"Yes," he said, "I can quite understand it. She wanted to have her fling, as it were, to get her eyes opened. And she saw the world with a vengeance."

"You may put it like that if you like: though the expression seems to me rather too flippant to describe her experiences. Her husband ill-treated her."

"Do you mean that he beat her?"

"Yes, he ill-treated her physically. But now comes something, Prince, which you too will not have heard about before. She gave me to understand that he ill-treated her not only in a temper, not only in anger and rage, but also without being exasperated, simply for his own satisfaction. I mean, that his caresses were so revolting as to amount to ill-treatment."

Klaus Heinrich was silent. Both looked very grave. At last he asked: "Did the Countess have any children?"

"Yes, two. They died quite young, both only a few weeks old, and that's the greatest sorrow the Countess has had to bear. It would seem from her hints that it was the fault of the loose women for whom her husband betrayed her that the children died directly after birth."

Both remained silent, and their eyes clouded over.

"Add to that," continued Imma Spoelmann, "that he dissipated his wife's dowry, at cards and with the women—a respectable dowry it was too—and after her parents' death her whole fortune also. Relations of hers too helped him once, when he was near having to leave the service on account of his debts. But then came a scandal, an altogether revolting one, in which he was involved and which did for him once and for all."

"What was it?" asked Klaus Heinrich.