been looking at the world for thirty-one years, know human nature much better than a man like you, who have the additional disadvantage of being an artist, and therefore blinded by a touch of beauty. Do you not see that in ten years I shall be an old woman, no longer like your Eve, and then what would you think of me, unless my inner being was necessary to your life and worthy of your love and constancy? And for that reason you must resolve to let a barrier remain between us for a whole year yet. You may be sure it has cost me a hard struggle to lay such a condition on myself; we have already lost so many happy years of youth. It seems cruel that, in addition to all this, we must have a long engagement. But the more dearly I love you, and wretched as I should be if you did not stand the test, the more bravely I must and will adhere to my resolution. Then, besides, have I not to win your child's heart, so that it will not draw back, as from a stranger, from her whom it is to call mother?" She gazed in his face with a look of the deepest faith and tenderness, and reached him her hand across the table at which they were both sitting. He grasped it so tightly that she smilingly tried to withdraw it again. "Perhaps you are right," said he, seriously. "At all events I think you understand all these things far better than I do, for to tell the truth, I am still so stunned with the thought of this happiness, that you could make me consent to anything you asked. Good God! with what a heart I came in that door--a doomed man, a lost wretch--and now, and always--" He was just on the point of starting up again--the place at her feet which the dog had occupied seemed to have an attraction for him--when they heard old Erich's voice in the front parlor, saying to some one, in its driest tone, that his mistress was not at home for anybody today. "Not even for me?" queried this some one. "I must hear her say so herself before I will believe it." "Angelica!" cried Julie. "We ought not to shut out this dear creature from our happiness." She sprang up and hastened out before her friend--to whom any third person was hateful at such a moment--could make any objection. "Don't be afraid of him!" she cried, leading the astonished Angelica into the room triumphantly. "It is true he is a perfect Berserker, and not a good man to quarrel with. But for that very reason you must take my part against him. Two staid women of our age ought to have no difficulty in controlling such a violent man. And isn't it your duty to help me out of the trouble into which you got me yourself? Dear Jansen, do not put on such an angry face! Tell this dear, good, astonished friend that we are resolved, in all seriousness, never again to lose sight of one another after having been brought together in so strange a way, thanks to art and to this excellent artist, whom we will not leave without her reward!"