But Meta did not find it out, and could not do so, as Aunt Rikchen did not herself know the exact state of affairs, and the others were most careful to keep her in ignorance. Meta's communication therefore by no means contributed to Elsa's peace of mind, and if Elsa had at first, at least, had the happiness of hearing of Reinhold through Meta, how he had come to the studio and kept her company for a long time, and what he had said, and how he had looked, even this source of consolation was now decreasing, and seemed gradually to be drying up altogether. One day he had scarcely been there for five minutes, another time only just passed through the studio, a third time Meta had not seen him at all, a fourth time she could not even say whether she had seen him or not. Elsa thought she knew the meaning of this apparent negligence. Meta had found out something which she could not tell her, or had in some other way become convinced of the hopelessness of her love; and the ample details which she gave from her other experiences and observations in the studio, only served to conceal her embarrassment. It was therefore with a very divided heart that Elsa heard how Meta daily grew in favour with Aunt Rikchen, who was really a most excellent old lady, and whose heart was in the right place, if her spectacles did always get crooked, or slipped to the end of her nose. And how there was something especially touching to her in the good lady, for she herself would look just like that fifty years hence. But far more touching to her was a lovely young blind girl, who now came every day, because Herr Anders wished to bring the two together in one group. "When she spoke it was just as if a lark were singing high up in the blue sky on a Sunday mornings when all is still in the fields; and Justus said that Nature had never before produced such a contrast as she and Cilli made, and if he succeeded in reproducing it, no one could speak to him again save hat in hand. There was also next to Justus's studio another which aroused all her curiosity, because the owner of it never allowed herself to be seen, and she could form no idea of what a lady could be like who modelled in clay or hammered at the marble, least of all of such a beautiful, elegant lady as Justus said Fräulein Schmidt was, for you know, Elsa, a sculptor looks like a baker, only that he has clay in his fingers instead of dough, and is powdered with marble-dust instead of flour, and you would hardly take such a queer-looking creature for a respectable gentleman, much less for a great artist, and Justus says the one who looks cleanest and most elegant in spite of his working blouse, and is handsomer than any one I ever saw in my life, is no true artist, as he can do nothing more than point and block out; but you, poor child, do not know what pointing is. Pointing, you must know, is when you take a thing like a stork's bill, you know--"