if you saw him, you would know what a fool I was!"

They had reached the house by this time, and, as Kitty opened the door,
she added, "I must write soon. I must hear something about him. What may
not have happened in a year? Perhaps he is dead."

She did not mention her lover again to Fräulein Vogel, but she showed her
his portrait; and the sharp-eyed painter looked at the frank, manly face a
long time.

"Write to him, you foolish woman," she said.

"Not yet. I will wait a little longer," Kitty rejoined.

The summer wore away. In August they went for a fortnight to a little
place near Remagen,--Bad Neunahr it is called,--and here Kitty's eyes were
opened, and she suddenly awoke to the fact that her new friend was no
ordinary friend.

"You need not worry about money," said Fräulein Vogel. "If you don't learn
how to make it, you know how to spend it. I could never learn that myself."

But in the autumn Kitty only worked the harder, believing with all her
heart that patience would make a respectable, picture-selling painter out
of a Chinese mandarin. When the gray dawn stole in at the window she
sprang out of bed, dressed, and was off to the studio for an hour before
breakfast. She begrudged the time spent for dinner, she bemoaned a dark
day, and she laid her brushes down reluctantly in the twilight. In the
evening she wanted to go to the theatre, to a concert, to a supper. Such
as she find plenty of companions, and from time to time DÃ¥sseldorf raised