ils. I had a ready answer for
all questions and saw my chance of getting something else besides the
picture.

"It will not take much time," I said. "I have sent a telegram to
Angeli, and I do not think it will delay our journey much. Aniela will
give Angeli five or six sittings, and as you would have to stop at
Vienna in any case to see Notnagel, there is no loss of time. The
dress can be painted from a model, and the face will be finished in
five sittings. But we must send at once Aniela's photograph and a lock
of her hair. The hair I must have at once. Then Angeli will be able to
make the rough sketch, and later on put in the finishing touches."
I counted upon the fact that none of the ladies knew much about
portrait-painting. I wanted the hair for myself, not for Angeli, to
whom it would have been of use only if he painted Aniela's portrait
from a photograph, to which he would not have consented. But I spoke
as if the whole portrait depended on that lock of hair. Two hours
after breakfast I received an answer to my telegram. Angeli is in
Vienna, where he is just finishing the portrait of the Princess M. I
wrote to him at once and sent him Aniela's photograph; then went out
to Aniela, who was walking in the garden.

"And your hair?" I said; "I want to send the letter by the two-o'clock
post."

She went at once into her room, and shortly afterwards returned with
a lock of hair. My hand shook a little as I took it from her, but my
eyes looked straight into hers and said in that glance:--

"Do you not guess that I want it for myself, that it will be for me
the most precious treasure?"

Aniela did not say anything, but blushed like a girl who listens for
the first time to words of love. She had guessed it. I thought that
for one touch of those lips it would be worth while giving one's life.
My love for her becomes so strong at times that it is akin to pain.

I have now a small part of her physical being. I got it by cunning. I
the man of the world, the sceptic, I who enter into myself and analyze
every thought, have come to practise little tricks and devices,
like Goethe's Siebel. But I say to myself, "At the worst I am only
sentimental and ridiculous." Who knows whether the second self that
reduces everything to consciousness with cold criticism is not more
foolish and more ridiculous? Analysis is like the pulling to pieces of
a flower. It spoils the beauty of life, therefore, its happiness--the
only sensible thi