He was never without the photograph of his ideal in his breast pocket,
and when he was in a good temper he used to show me one or other of
them, whom I had never seen, with a knowing smile, and once, when we
were sitting in a _café_ in the _Prater_, he took out a portrait without
saying a word, and laid it on the table before me.

It was the portrait of a beautiful woman, but what struck me in it first
of all was not the almost classic cut of her features, but her white
eyes.

"If she had not the black hair of a living woman, I should take her for
a statue," I said.

"Certainly," my friend replied; "for a statue of Venus, perhaps for the
Venus of Milo, herself."

"Who is she?"

"A young actress."

"That is a matter of course in your case; what I meant was, what is her
name?"

My friend told me, and it was a name which is at present one of the best
known on the German stage, with which a number of terrestrial adventures
are connected, as every Viennese knows, with which those of Venus
herself were only innocent toying, but which I then heard for the first
time.

My idealist described her as a woman of the highest talent, which I