"Angelica!" he cried, eagerly, approaching to seize her hand, which, however, she instantly drew back. "Why do you speak this way, if you will not make me happy--if you will not even let me kiss your hand? No, I won't be kept from speaking any longer; for, no matter how much about my bad qualities you may still have on your conscience, you can no longer deny that you like me, that you think well of me; and that is the main thing and a thousand times better than I ever dared to hope. Dearest, best Angelica, only try and believe that even a thirty-one-year-old battle-painter can improve. I will stop up my flute with lead, I will give my mice strychnine in a piece of Swiss cheese, and will wear a covering over my nose so that the children shall run away at sight of me. And, finally, in regard to my love-affairs--do you really believe I am so wanting in taste, to say nothing of all nobler motives, as to have eyes for such every-day doll-faces, after having found in your countenance the image of all love and goodness, of all wisdom and grace?" In the mean while he got possession of one of her hands and pressed it so earnestly, at the same time gazing into her face with such true-hearted, mischievous eyes, that she grew quite red and came very near losing her firmness. However, she quickly recovered herself again and said: "You are a truly dangerous man, Rosenbusch. I begin to realize that now from my own experience. If I did not call to my aid all the little sense and self-consciousness I possess, we should now fall into one another's arms, and ruin would take its course. One more name would stand on your list; you would go to the war, and there, in the great events that go to make up the history of the world, you would find the very best excuse for letting this little affair of the heart drop completely out of your memory. No, my friend, I think too much of myself for that. I confidently believe that my respected person has merely become of importance in your eyes, because I have heretofore withstood your amiability in a perfectly incomprehensible way. As soon as you should become convinced that I too am only a weak woman, I should become a matter of great indifference to you. Now, it is true, my stupid honesty has prevented me from concealing this from you; but I don't regard myself as hopelessly lost even yet. Now, if you go to the war, we shall both be equally well off. We shall both have ample time and opportunity for forgetting one another. I, to be sure, here alone in this deathly quiet house, where I hear nothing but the squeak of your mice--I shall have somewhat the harder time. But perhaps some other dangerous youth will move into your quarters--a dark-complexioned Hungarian or Pole--I have always had a partiality for brunettes, and for that reason alone it is a great mistake for me to love you with your red beard."