he
said to himself, "if I had allowed myself to do such a thing in my own
dear home, the whole town would be talking of nothing else to-morrow,
besides adding all sorts of exaggerations. But here--'Hier bin ich
Mensch, hier darf ich's sein!' Long live golden liberty!"

He rode back to town in merry mood. He imagined that he could still
feel the arms of the girl about his breast, and her warm breath on his
face. His blood had not been cooled by his ride, as he had hoped, and
the sharp trot to which he spurred on his horse did not help him. He
gave up the reeking horse at the riding-school, and then turned into
the Briennerstrasse, in order to sit awhile in the Court Garden, and
eat an ice and nurse his dreams.

When he came back to the house where Julie lived, he checked himself
suddenly. Who was that standing motionless by the garden fence, with
his eyes fixed on the bright parterre window? Jansen?

Felix made a wide circuit to avoid him, and stood looking at him on the
other side of the street in the shadow of the houses. For a good half
hour he saw his friend opposite continue at his post. Then the window
was closed by a heavy curtain, and, immediately after, the watcher at
the gate tore himself away and departed slowly.

Felix did not follow him. He scorned to be a spy on the secret ways of
his friend. What chance had disclosed to him gave him enough to think
about for to-day, without being able to find a solution to the riddle.

_BOOK II_.

CHAPTER I.

It was unusually still in Angelica's studio, so still that one could
plainly hear, through the thin wall that separated her from her
neighbor, the cheerful squeak of his white mice. This was always a sign
that their master was, as he expressed it, on the rampage, wielding his
brush in the thick of the battle of Luetzen.

Angelica, too, was very busy. But although she usually liked to chat
over her work, to keep the people who sat to her from falling asleep,
to-day she rarely opened her lips. It was the last sitting; the last
touch, which, after all, is always a new beginning, was to be given to
the picture--every stroke of the brush decided the fate of a _nuance_,
the success or failure of an expression.

In order to work more surely, she had put on a pair of spectacles,
that can scarcely be said to have improved her appearance, and the
painting-jacket, on the left sleeve of which