rsel. You would like,
perhaps, to paint her as another pigeon-breasted Diana emerging from a
pool under a German oak-tree, and setting horns on the brow of an
Acteon who has stolen his legs from the Apollo Belvedere? The girl
seems to you good enough for that, does she not? But that's not to be
done. You will never get her to consent to any mythological
ambiguities. Do you suppose I have ever seen an inch more of her than
what she is gracious enough to shew us both at this present moment? And
even for this I have had to run after her long, and almost despaired of
her ever sitting to me at all. But hunger is the best of go-betweens.
And so I have had to give in to all her severe conditions. The door is
always to stand open, the little school-girl is always to sit there,
and if I ever venture to visit her at her own abode, there is to be an
end of us both! Of course I agreed to everything she chose; I was so
besotted by her face, I could have committed one of the seven deadly
sins just to see her once in this light, sitting on that seat, and so
to be able to study her to my heart's content. As to what I am to make
of it afterwards that is immaterial. But if I secretly hoped gradually
to melt the ice between us--at all events to a kind of brotherly
friendship and regard--why, I was much mistaken. It is no great wonder
after all. I am not to her taste, and I think none the worse of her for
that. But there have been others who accidentally turned in--this is
the third sitting--who were thoroughly discomfited, very showy
audacious gentry--handsome Fritz, and Schluchtenmueller, and our Don
Ramiro, with his languishing tenor voice. They were all tinder at once,
but after a little burning and glowing had to retire, extinguished as
if by a gush of cold water. Is it not so, Miss,' said he suddenly in
German to the silent beauty, 'it is perfectly useless to pay you
compliments? This gentleman--who is only a landscape-painter it is
true, but still a connoisseur in women--would willingly express his
wonder and admiration. But I have told him that you would rather not
hear anything of the sort.'

"'You are right,' she replied with the utmost indifference. 'It is the
fact, I know, and I cannot alter it. But God knows if I had had
anything to do with it, I should never have chosen the face He has
given me.'

"Her manner of saying this perfectly amazed me. It had not a touch of
that mock modesty, which says the very reverse of what it