on itself, but
there is one point on which women are not to be trifled with, which
makes hyenas of them, as Schiller says, and I inwardly called myself a
confounded ass for having displayed my aesthetic enthusiasm for the
beautiful girl in so wrong a quarter.

"Of course I took good care not to revert to the dangerous subject, but
remained at home the whole of the next day, and devoted myself to
painting an old oak-forest, as if the riven and rugged bark of the
secular trees was far more bewitching than the smoothest satin-skin of
a maiden of twenty, and a gnarled oak-branch more ensnaring than the
exquisite little Venus-like nose of our poor persecuted beauty.

"The next day I even accomplished a greater triumph over myself, in
that I withstood the temptation of looking in--quite accidentally, of
course--at Van Kuylen's studio, there to play the part of comforter to
a distressed child of humanity. I was certainly a little absent-minded
all the afternoon, and as we walked to Nymphenburg, our children pushed
along in the perambulator by the maid, failed to get up any very
animated conversation. I apologised somewhat lamely for it, on the plea
that I was studying atmospheric effects, though indeed there was
nothing very noticeable in the sky. But my wife found it much
pleasanter than if I had indulged my bad habit of too earnestly
studying the faces of the girls and women we passed. There is
indisputably about the sex this one weakness, that they have themselves
no conception of a purely artistic standpoint, and therefore never
allow for it in others.

"At last after four or five days, I found it intolerable to my manly
self-respect, thus suddenly to withdraw from my worthy Dutchman, merely
because he was in my wife's bad books. Consequently, after washing my
brushes, I set out just about twilight, when I knew that though he
could paint no longer, he was sure to be at home; and in this was most
perfectly justified in my own eyes, since I could not possibly be
expecting to find the fair Kate there, but only my small and unjustly
calumniated friend.

"And to be sure I saw from a distance the shining of his lamp through
the window: nevertheless I had to be told by the old servant that her
master was gone out. Neither did I fare any better on the following day
when I knocked at his studio during his hours of work. I called out my
name as loud as I could, but he wouldn't open. When I enquired from the
old servant whether