"I'll wager she does it!" said Rosenbusch. "An astoundingly resolute woman that, and absolutely not to be stopped when an enthusiasm seizes her! This time she really has made a devilish remarkable discovery; but you know what wonderful beauties she has tried to talk up to us before--eh, Jansen? She has a positive mania for admiration, and, when she is possessed by it, she is not very fastidious in her choice of subjects. 'The sea rages, and will have its sacrifice!'"
The sculptor did not answer. He strolled along beside the others for a while, silent and abstracted. Then he suddenly said: "Let us go! It seems as though the art-sense had suddenly disappeared or died out in me. Such a perfect piece of living Nature puts to shame all illusions of color, so that even the great masters seem like bunglers beside it."
Meanwhile the beautiful unknown had slowly descended the steps of the Pinakothek, and turned in the direction of the Obelisk, clearly unconscious of the fact that twenty paces behind her an enthusiastic artist was upon her track, never losing sight of her for an instant.
And, indeed, it was a rare refreshment to the eye to look upon this beautiful figure as it passed along. If one may talk of a "silent music of form," here everything was _legato_, while the little artist was in a perpetual _staccato_ movement. The stranger moved as though she stepped on an elastic ground, and seemed not to mind the walk in the least, in spite of the oppressive mid-day heat. She looked neither to the right nor left; in her hands, on which she wore half-gloves of black net, she held a large green fan, which she opened now and then to protect her face against the sun.
Her worshiper grew more enthusiastic with every moment, and gave utterance to her feelings in muttered monologue, sprinkled, according to her fashion, with Italian interjections.
At length she saw the subject of her admiration turn to the left, and go into a neat house on the Briennerstrasse. Here, she knew, there were furnished rooms to let; so the stranger must have arranged for a considerable stay in Munich. But how to get at her? To ring at every bell in the two stories, and ask if a beautiful woman in yellow silk lived there, did not seem very practicable. And did she live here, after all? Might she not be only making a visit?