The child was a mere incident in their lives, a thing that had come undesired and had gone unregretted.
It had not even a name; a strange, hybrid little being, come and gone within a fortnight's time, yet combining in its puny little body the blood of the Hebrew, the Pole, and the Spaniard.
But the birth of this child had peculiar consequences.

Maria came out of her dementia, and in a few days the household settled itself again to its sordid regime and Maria went about her duties as usual.

Then one evening, about a week after the child's burial, Zerkow had asked Maria to tell him the story of the famous service of gold plate for the hundredth time.
Zerkow had come to believe in this story infallibly.

He was immovably persuaded that at one time Maria or Maria's people had possessed these hundred golden dishes.

In his perverted mind the hallucination had developed still further.