e of these greasy-haired
dreamers? Her whole nature shuddered in revolt at this idea. Through the
open window, the tepid breath of nature wafted toward her the odor of
the rising sap in gentle, warm whiffs that filled her with a feverish
astonishment. Stretched on the patched divan, her eyes closed and her
lovely form kissed by the tepid breeze, she dreamed, dreamed, dreamed--

The awakening was folly, a rash act, an elopement.

In the house on Rue de Navarin there happened to be one fellow more
daring than the rest, he was an artist who, in the jostling daily life,
kindled his love at the strange flame that burned in the lustful
virgin's eyes. A glance revealed all.

The meeting with a rake determined the life of this girl. She fell, not
through ignorance or curiosity, but moved by anger and, as it were, out
of bravado. Since she was without social position, motherless and
isolated, having no family, without a prop and unloved, well, she threw
off the yoke absolutely. She broke through her shackles at one bound.
She rebelled!--

She eloped with this man.

He was a handsome fellow, who thirsted for pleasure, and took his prize
boldly about, plunging Marianne into the ranks of vulgar mistresses, and
had not the mad woman's superior intelligence, will, and even her
disgust, ruled at once over this first lover and the equivocal
surroundings into which he had thrust her, she would have become a mere
courtesan.

Kayser had experienced only astonishment at the flight of his niece. How
was it that he had never suspected the cause that disturbed her
thoughts? "These diabolical women, nobody knows them, not even those who
made them. A father even would not have detected anything. The more
excuse therefore for an uncle!" So he resumed his musing on elevated
art, quieting his displeasure--for his comrades jeered him--by the
fumes of his pipe.

Moreover, all things considered, the painter added, Marianne had
followed the natural law. Full liberty for everybody, was still one of
Simon Kayser's pet theories. Marianne was of age and could dispose of
her lot without the necessity of submitting to a strict endorsement of
her conduct. When she had "sounded all the depths of the abyss,"--and
Kayser pronounced these words while puffing his tobacco--she would
return. Uncle Kayser would always keep a place for her at what he called
_his fireside_.

"The fireside of your pipe," Marianne once remarked to him.

So Kayser consoled hi