"To be sure," continued she, after a pause, during which Felix sat, as if in a dream, gazing at her red lips and her white teeth, that one could have counted when she spoke, "to be sure, I might fare well enough if I only would! So well, that that false black cat Pepi would envy me." "If you only would, Zenz?" "Yes, if I were willing to be wicked!" she added, in a low tone, and for a moment her face grew serious. But in the next instant she laughed merrily again, as if she would laugh away the flush that had suffused her face. "Do you know an artist named Rossel?" "Certainly. Edward Rossel. What of him?" "He came to see me about a week ago. He said he had seen the figure that Herr Jansen modeled from me, and he said, if I would come to him and stand as a model, he would pay me three times as well for it." "And why haven't you gone to him?" "Hm!--because I didn't like him. I will not hire myself out in that way for the gentlemen, so that every one will know me and say: 'Aha! that is Red Zenz!' I am sorry enough that I stood to please Herr Jansen, although he is such a good gentleman. But now they know my address, and they think that is as much as to say that I will go and be a model for any one who wants me." "Didn't you like Herr Rossel?" "No. Not at all. He doesn't look in the least as if he were an artist, and wanted to study from a model. He made such big eyes--No! I sent him off with a flea in his ear. And then he went to Pepi to get her to persuade me. But she knows me. She went to him herself, for she thought he would just as soon have one as another. But he only gave her a gulden and sent her away again, saying that he had no time just then, and that he happened to particularly want red hair. Then she flew out again about red. I have heard though that Herr Rossel lives like a prince, and Pepi said that if I were not a fool--at that time she was not so down on me--I might make my fortune." "But are you going to continue such a fool all your life long, Zenz?" "I don't know," replied she, frankly. "Nobody is sure of herself when she is young and has plenty of time on her hands. But I think as long as I have my five senses about me--" She hesitated. "Well, Zenz?" he asked, taking one of her little hands, with its fingers' ends roughened by work, in one of his. "So long," she said, quietly, "I will not do such a thing to please anyone whom I do not love." "And how must the man look whom you could love? Only like Herr Jansen?" She laughed. "Oh! no. He is so much older than I. I only like him in just the same way that I might have liked my father. He must be younger and very nice, and--" She stopped abruptly, looked askance at him, a little coquettishly, and said: "But what nonsense we are talking! Won't you eat and drink something, or has the scarecrow next you there taken away all your appetite!"