Leah brought the glass of water, but was so silent, that her father before going away, asked anxiously if she were ill. "I never felt better," she replied with a radiant glance from her beautiful, calm eyes. Shaking his head, the little man went out, accompanied by Edwin, who took leave of his pupil with a cordial pressure of the hand. "My dear Herr Doctor," said he when they were in the open air, "is it not strange that a father cannot understand his own child? Certainly every human being is a fresh marvel from the hand of God. This is not like our other experiences, which are only a copy of our own natures and enlighten us in regard to ourselves, our strength or weakness. Only the great masters can have a similar feeling, when from the breath of divine art something new appears, which resembles nothing in the world, and surprises the artist himself. I believe that Raphael, when his Sistine Madonna was completed, did not understand her much better than I do my daughter. Yes, yes, my dear friend, these are transcendent mysteries; we can only pray and thank God that we are considered worthy to experience them." CHAPTER XII. The Frau Professorin Valentin lived in a pretty new house, and occupied large neat rooms, which however, to an artistic eye, with all their tidiness had a somewhat gloomy, cheerless air. She received Edwin in the largest and plainest of all; the little artist had not accompanied him upstairs, he wanted to deliver a few engraved blocks to the person who had ordered them. The stately, fair-haired woman must have been remarkably pretty in by-gone years, and even now, though considerably over forty, her bright eyes and white teeth possessed a youthful charm, especially when she laughed. She was sitting with five or six seamtresses among mountains of calico and linen, from which she was cutting children's dresses and underclothes. She received her visitor like an expected guest, and ushered him into a smaller apartment, her real home, as she called it, which was fitted up with a writing table, book cases, a flower stand, and all sorts of pretty trifles. Over the sofa hung the portrait of a hypochondriacal rascal looking man with grey hair, from whose wrinkled brow and compressed lips it was easy to perceive that the care of his digestion had been the principal occupation of his life.