young lady like Ottilie could desire, a young man like the Architect
ought not to have refused. The latter, however, when she took occasion
to give him a gentle reproof for it, had a very valid excuse to offer
for himself.

"If you knew," he said, "how roughly even cultivated people allow
themselves to handle the most valuable works of art, you would forgive
me for not producing mine among the crowd. No one will take the trouble
to hold a medal by the rim. They will finger the most beautiful
impressions, and the smoothest surfaces; they will take the rarest coins
between the thumb and forefinger, and rub them up and down, as if they
were testing the execution with the touch. Without remembering that a
large sheet of paper ought to be held in two hands, they will lay hold,
with one, of an invaluable proof-engraving of some drawing which cannot
be replaced, like a conceited politician laying hold of a newspaper, and
passing judgment by anticipation, as he is cutting the pages, on the
occurrences of the world. Nobody cares to recollect that if twenty
people, one after the other, treat a work of art in this way, the
one-and-twentieth will not find much to see there."

"Have not I often vexed you in this way?" asked Ottilie. "Have not I,
through my carelessness, many times injured your treasures?"

"Never once," answered the Architect, "never. For you it would be
impossible. In you the right thing is innate."

"In any case," replied Ottilie, "it would not be a bad plan, if in the
next edition of the book of good manners, after the chapters which tell
us how we ought to eat and drink in company, a good circumstantial
chapter were inserted, telling how to behave among works of art and in
museums."

"Undoubtedly," said the Architect; "and then curiosity-collectors and
amateurs would be better contented to show their valuable treasures to
the world."

Ottilie had long, long forgiven him; but as he seemed to have taken her
reproof sorely to heart, and assured her again and again that he would
gladly produce everything--that he was delighted to do anything for
his friends--she felt that she had wounded his feelings, and that she
owed him some compensation. It was not easy for her, therefore, to give
an absolute refusal to a request which he made her in the conclusion of
this conversation, although when she called her heart into counsel about
it, she did not see how she could allow herself to do what he wished.

The circum