"Is that what you like?" he cried; "or shall I stop?"
She did not answer.
"How would it be," he said, "if now I should trot back to town with you, and not draw rein until I came to my house? You would have to come with me, then, whether you wanted to or not, and do what I asked you. Aren't you quite in my power now?"
He reined in the horse for a moment, as though to give her opportunity to settle herself for a longer ride. But suddenly he felt how her arms unclasped, and in the next instant she had slid down from the saddle, and stood before him in the dusk, out of breath and rearranging her light dress.
"I thank you very much." she said. "It was very jolly; but, now, that's enough. And all the rest is nonsense, and so, good-night! If you can catch me again you may keep me!"
In a second she had sprung away and disappeared behind the nearest houses. Even if he had been seriously inclined to follow her, he would never have been able to find her trail again among the gardens and hedges that bordered the field.
A few passers-by had watched this singular performance from the avenue. He heard all sort of jokes that he did not understand. "Thank God!" 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 Lützen.
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 she was accustomed to wipe her brush, had burst open in the ardor of her work, and, with her lance-like maulstick and her shield-like palate, gave a certain pugnacious aspect to her good, honest face, as if she were engaged in a struggle for the release of the enchanted princess who sat in a chair opposite her, and who was also unusually quiet. Whether Julie was turning over in her mind some especially serious thought, or had, like all people sitting to a painter, merely fallen under the influence of a certain absent-minded melancholy, it was impossible to make out.
She was especially beautiful to-day. Instead of her raw-silk dress, she wore a lighter stuff of transparent black, through which gleamed her white neck. Angelica had planned this in order that all the light might be concentrated on the face; and the arrangement of the hair, which left the contour of the head fully visible and allowed a few simply-braided locks to flow over the shoulders, was a special invention of the artist. Now, in the steady light, the dead white of her complexion, and the soft blond of her hair, shone out so gently subdued and yet so clear, and the eyes, under the brown lashes, had, with all their softness, such a fiery sparkle, that one could appreciate Angelica's assertion that a thing of this sort could not be painted--gold, pearls, and sapphires were the only materials with which to rival this fusion of color.
It is true, the first bloom of youth was passed. A keen eye could detect a wrinkle here and there, a certain sharpness of feature, and the easy grace with which her noble figure moved left no doubt that she had passed those years when a girl is always turning this way and that, like a bird on a branch, as if always on the point of fluttering away into the unknown, tempting, beautiful life outside, or else glancing eagerly around to see whether a hunter or trapper is in sight.
For that matter it would have been hard to conceive that this still, reserved, charming creature had ever committed the usual school-girl follies. But as soon as she began to speak, and especially to laugh, her expressive face beamed with youthful merriment, her eyes, which were a little near-sighted, slightly closed and took on a mischievous look, and only her firm mouth retained its expression of thoughtful determination. "The rest of your face," said Angelica at the very first sitting, "was given you by God; for your mouth you must thank yourself."
She had intended by this remark to lead up to a conversation about careers and experiences; but the only answer was a meaning, yet reserved, smile from the mouth of which she spoke. Angelica was a girl of delicate feeling; she was naturally burning with curiosity to learn more of the past life of her admired conquest. But, after the repulse of her first attempts, she was much too proud to beg for a confidence that was not proffered. For this self-denial she was to-day to be rewarded, for Julie suddenly opened her lips, and said with a sigh:
"You are one of the happiest human beings I ever knew, Angelica."
"Hm!" replied the artist. "And why do I seem so?"
"Because you are not only free, but know how to make some use of your freedom."
"If it were only a good use! But do you really believe, dear Julie, that my pictures of 'flower, fruit, and thorn pieces,' and my bungling attempts to imitate God's likeness, have made me imagine that I am an especially interesting example of my class? Dearest friend, what you call happiness is really only the well-known 'German happiness'--a happiness, because it is not a greater unhappiness--a happiness of necessity."
"I can well understand," continued Julie, "that a moment never comes when one feels perfectly contented; when one, so to speak, has reached the summit of the mountain, and looks around and says: there is nothing higher than this, unless one steps straight into the clouds. But yet you love your art, and I think you can busy yourself all day, your whole life long, with anything you love--"
"If I only knew whether it loved me in return! Don't you see, there lies the rub; a most 'devilish' rub, Herr Rosebud would say. Are you really consecrated to art--I mean consecrated by the grace of God--when, if it hadn't been for the merest chance in the world, you would never have touched a brush?"
"You