o talk up to us
before--eh, Jansen? She has a positive mania for admiration, and, when
she is possessed by it, she is not very fastidious in her choice of
subjects. 'The sea rages, and will have its sacrifice!'"

The sculptor did not answer. He strolled along beside the others for a
while, silent and abstracted. Then he suddenly said: "Let us go! It
seems as though the art-sense had suddenly disappeared or died out in
me. Such a perfect piece of living Nature puts to shame all illusions
of color, so that even the great masters seem like bunglers beside it."

CHAPTER VI.

Meanwhile the beautiful unknown had slowly descended the steps of the
Pinakothek, and turned in the direction of the Obelisk, clearly
unconscious of the fact that twenty paces behind her an enthusiastic
artist was upon her track, never losing sight of her for an instant.

And, indeed, it was a rare refreshment to the eye to look upon this
beautiful figure as it passed along. If one may talk of a "silent music
of form," here everything was _legato_, while the little artist was in
a perpetual _staccato_ movement. The stranger moved as though she
stepped on an elastic ground, and seemed not to mind the walk in the
least, in spite of the oppressive mid-day heat. She looked neither to
the right nor left; in her hands, on which she wore half-gloves of
black net, she held a large green fan, which she opened now and then to
protect her face against the sun.

Her worshiper grew more enthusiastic with every moment, and gave
utterance to her feelings in muttered monologue, sprinkled, according
to her fashion, with Italian interjections.

At length she saw the subject of her admiration turn to the left, and
go into a neat house on the Briennerstrasse. Here, she knew, there were
furnished rooms to let; so the stranger must have arranged for a
considerable stay in Munich. But how to get at her? To ring at every
bell in the two stories, and ask if a beautiful woman in yellow silk
lived there, did not seem very practicable. And did she live here,
after all? Might she not be only making a visit?

The painter was just debating whether she should walk up and down
before the house like a sentry, when a window opened in the corner-room
on the ground-floor, before which lay a little garden with its tall
shrubs looking dry and dusty in the mid-day sun, and the beauty leaned
out to shut the blind. She had taken off her hat, and her