Ugly? I don't find you at all ugly, Zenz. And if you only cared to be
a model for me, as you do for Herr Jansen--Do you know, he has kept me
for weeks studying an old skeleton and a lay figure, and I am
forgetting over such work the very sight of a human being."

She shook her head, laughed, and then said, becoming serious again:

"That was only meant in joke, of course. I am not so simple as to let
myself be talked into believing that you are really a sculptor!"

"Well, just as you like, Zenz. I won't try to persuade you to do
anything you don't like. Come, take some beer; a new cask has just been
broached."

She drank eagerly out of his glass; and then a spirited overture was
played which interrupted their conversation for a time. Even after this
they talked entirely about other things. She told him about her former
life in Salzburg, how strict her mother had been with her, how often
she had known want, and how often of a Sunday she had sat quietly in
her chamber and had wished she might be allowed, just for once, to join
the merry, gayly-dressed throng outside, that she could only look at
from a distance. No doubt her mother had really cared for her, but for
all that she let her feel that her existence was an eternal reproach
and burden to her. Of course she cried when she lost her mother, but
her grief did not last long. The pleasure of feeling herself free soon
dried her tears. Now, to be sure--all alone as she was, without a soul
in all the wide world to trouble itself whether she lived or died--now,
she sometimes felt that she would give up everything if she could only
be back again at her mother's side.

"That is always the way," concluded she, with a nod of the head that
looked droll enough in its seriousness, "one never has what one wants;
and still, people say one ought to be contented. Sometimes I wish I
were dead. And then again I feel as if I would like to promenade up and
down the live-long summer through, wear beautiful dresses, live like a
princess, and--"

"And be made love to by a prince--isn't it so?"

"Of course. Alone, one can have no happiness. What would be the use of
my princess's dresses, unless I could drive some one perfectly crazy
with them?"

He gazed so steadfastly in her eyes, that she suddenly blushed and was
silent. The strange mixture of lightheartedness and melancholy in the
poor child, of enjoyment of life and reserve, of secret love and
introspective moralizing, attracted h