"Let me speak. Neither of us is timid or fearful of calling things by their real name; neither of us is a coward, ready to fly before danger. You love me, or think you do; and you fancy that in the sittings you ask of me the chance would surely offer to speak to me of your love. But what if I do not love you?--if I look upon your protestations and declarations as outrages, and have you expelled from the house by my servants, what will you do, what will you say, what will become of you? Do you still hold by this masterpiece, which I say is a mere pretext?" Lise Olsdorf, speaking thus, was superb in her energy. Paul looked at her with admiration. She had never seemed more beautiful or more desirable. "You do not answer," she went on. "So, then, I am not wrong." "You are wrong, madame--wholly wrong. It is true that I love you madly, but my love is one of the feverish passions that have their birth in the hearts alone of artists who are adorers of the beautiful. I feel within me a medley of passions. You are not for the man who loves merely the woman desired; you are also for the painter, the model he has dreamed of--the marvel of grace and beauty that will inspire him. You are not simply the woman who says 'Love;' you are the ideal as well that says 'Glory.' If it were otherwise, should I have had the courage to follow you, should I dare to speak as I am speaking, to take your hand and tell you that with my soul, with my senses, with my imagination--I love you--I love you?" Paul had seized her hands and was covering them with kisses. Then there happened a strange and fatal thing between the two beings drawn one to the other by every passion. After tearing away her hands from his grasp, Lise Olsdorf, falling back a pace, grew deathly pale and staggered. Her eyes gleamed, her lips were parted, a guttural cry, passionate and almost savage, broke from them, and she fell into the arms of Paul, who had sprung forward to support her. With a savage movement he crushed her in his arms, gluing his lips to hers. Under the gloomy shades of the great alleys of Pampeln was no longer an irreproachable wife, or a Princess Olsdorf proud of her name. There was only a yielding woman conquered by desires until then unsatiated. The other was the conqueror. The beast killed the soul. CHAPTER IV. GENERAL PODOI.