because it was in another guise that her fancy pictured life and
happiness to her. She was young and pretty; her parents, though not
actually wealthy people, were comfortably off, and her hope was rather to
wander about the world as a great pianiste, perhaps, as the wife of an
artist, than to lead a modest existence in the placid routine of the home
circle. But that hope soon faded. One day her father, in a transport of
domestic fervour, forbade her further attendance at the conservatoire of
music, which put an end to her prospects of an artistic career and at the
same time to her friendship with the young violinist who had since made
such a name for himself.

The next few years were singularly dull. At first, it is true, she felt
some slight disappointment, or even pain, but these emotions were
certainly of short duration. Later on she had received offers of
marriage from a young doctor and a merchant. She refused both of them;
the doctor because he was too ugly, and the merchant because he lived in
a country town. Her parents, too, were by no means enthusiastic about
either suitor.

When, however, Bertha's twenty-sixth birthday passed and her father lost
his modest competency through a bankruptcy, it had been her lot to put up
with belated reproaches on the score of all sorts of things which she
herself had begun to forget--her youthful artistic ambitions, her love
affair of long ago with the violinist, which had seemed likely to lead to
nothing, and the lack of encouragement which the ugly doctor and the
merchant from the country received at her hands.

At that time Victor Mathias Garlan was no longer resident in Vienna. Two
years before, the insurance company, in which he had been employed since
he had reached the age of twenty, had, at his own request, transferred