tell me what it means. I can imagine that it played a role in your
life, and perhaps a very decisive one. But the details I can only get
from you."

"Look at its counterpart," replied my strange friend, without
heeding my question.

The counterpart was an excellent copy of Titian's well-known "Venus
with the Mirror" in the Dresden Gallery.

"And what is the significance?"

Severin rose and pointed with his finger at the fur with which
Titian garbed his goddess of love.

"It, too, is a 'Venus in Furs,'" he said with a slight smile. "I
don't believe that the old Venetian had any secondary intention. He
simply painted the portrait of some aristocratic Mesalina, and was
tactful enough to let Cupid hold the mirror in which she tests her
majestic allure with cold satisfaction. He looks as though his task
were becoming burdensome enough. The picture is painted flattery.
Later an 'expert' in the Rococo period baptized the lady with the
name of Venus. The furs of the despot in which Titian's fair model
wrapped herself, probably more for fear of a cold than out of
modesty, have become a symbol of the tyranny and cruelty that
constitute woman's essence and her beauty.

"But enough of that. The picture, as it now exists, is a bitter
satire on our love. Venus in this abstract North, in this icy
Christian world, has to creep into huge black furs so as not to catch