the
table lay a female figure, still completely dressed, absorbed in a
book. The light fell upon a sharply cut, sullen face, past its first
youth, with very dark hair and heavy brows, to which an expression of
power and defiance lent a certain charm. The reader's thick locks had
become unbound, and she wore a plain summer dress of calico, which left
her shoulders and arms bare. Not the slightest change of countenance
betrayed that she had heard the sound of the loiterer's footsteps, and
when he paused a moment in the entry and looked through the door, she
did not even raise her eyes from her book, or push back the hair which
had fallen over her forehead.

"Are you still up, Fraeulein Christiane?" he said at last, advancing to
the threshold of the ante-room.

"As you see, Herr Doctor," she replied in a deep voice, without being
in the least disturbed. "The heat--and perhaps also this book--will not
permit me to sleep. I was so absorbed that I did not even hear you come
in. Besides, it is quite time to go to sleep. Good night."

"May I be permitted to ask, Fraeulein, what book it is that will not let
you sleep?" he said, still in the dark entry.

"Why not?" was the reply, after some little hesitation. "Besides, you
have a special right to do so, for it is your book. The proprietor of
the house, Meister Feyertag, borrowed it of you several weeks ago, and
yesterday told me so much about it, that I begged it of him for a day.
Now I can not leave it."

He laughed, and stepped within the room. "So the wicked rat-catcher, to
whose pipe all the men and women now dance, even though they often
declare his tunes horrible, has seized upon you also. You have
certainly just read the chapter on women, whose most striking portions
our worthy host daily quotes to his wife; and though it makes you
angry, you can not drive it out of your mind. The old sinner knows how
to begin: he hasn't read Goethe for nothing.

"'Doch wem gar nichts dran gelegen
Scheinet ob er reizt und ruehrt,
Der beleidigt, der verfuehrt!"

"You are mistaken," she replied, now sitting erect, so that her face
was shaded by the green screen on the lamp. "True, I have read the
chapter, but it made no _special_ impression upon me, either favorable
or otherwise It is a caricature, very like, and yet utterly false. He
seems to have known only the portion of our sex called 'females': 'tell
me with whom you associate,' etc. Well, we