believed, and as an angel of purity, which I did not believe; on that
particular occasion, however, I at any rate did not believe the
contrary.

A few days later, I was accidentally turning over the leaves of the
portrait album of another intimate friend of mine, who was a thoroughly
careless, somewhat dissolute Viennese, and I came across that strange
female face with the dead eyes again.

"How did you come by the picture of this Venus?" I asked him.

"Well, she certainly is a Venus," he replied, "but one of that cheap
kind who are to be met with in the _Graben_[3], which is their ideal
grove...."

[Footnote 3: The street where most of the best shops are to be found,
and much frequented by venial beauties.--TRANSLATOR.]

"Impossible!"

"I give you my word of honor it is so."

I could say nothing more after that. So my intellectual friend's new
ideal, that woman of the highest dramatic talent, that wonderful woman
with the white eyes, was a street Venus!

But my friend was right in one respect. He had not deceived himself with
regard to her wonderful dramatic gifts, and she very soon made a career
for herself; far from being a mute character on a suburban stage, she
rose in two years to be the leading actress at one of the principal