can do so little," and she hesitatingly gave him her album. He took
it and also the pencil, looked alternately at the mountains and on
the page of the book, and without asking leave began to improve upon
it, strengthening a line here, lightening a shadow and giving
greater breadth, and then growing deeply interested in his work, he
sat down without ceremony on the mossy bank, took a piece of india-
rubber, and erasing here, adding lines there, sometimes laying in a
shadow, giving strength to the foreground and lightness to the
background, he ended by making a really pretty and artistic sketch.

The girl had watched him wonderingly, and said as he returned the
album, "But you are a great artist," and without letting him speak
she went on, "and by your appearance I had taken you for a student!
But you are not in the least like a student, nor in fact like a
German either. I have often met Indian princes in society in London,
and I think you are very much like them."

Wilhelm smiled. "There is a grain of truth in what you say, although
you overrate it a little. A great artist I certainly am not, nor
even a little one, but I have always observed much and painted a
good deal myself, and originally I thought of devoting myself to an
artist's career; and if I have nothing in common with Indian
princes, and am merely a plebeian German, I very likely have a drop
of Indian blood in my veins."

"Really," she said, with curiosity.

"Yes, my mother was a Russian German living in Moscow, and whose
father, a Thuringian, had married a Russian girl of gypsy descent.
Through this grandmother, whom I never knew, I am related by remote