“Well, you see, Miss Von Loewenstein, what a severe critic you are of your exquisite copy of Carlo Dolce; whereas to me it seems already perfect.”
“Oh! but this is a picture, not a living being. Here the eye is our only guide. In the other case—”
“Then a blind man might do as well as one who had sight in choosing a wife?” interrupted Conrad, laughing.
Walburga laughed, too, then answered:
“Verily, sir, there is more truth in that than you imagine. He knows little of a woman who knows only what his eyes tell him of her.”
“Well, you may be right,” he added musingly; “you may be right. Yet I trust a good deal to mine.”
“If women did the same, might there not be fewer weddings?” said Walburga. “Besides, I know I am right. Why, the happiest lady in Munich—I know her intimately—is wedded to a little squab of a man, who squints so badly that his two eyes seem blended into one.”
Here a pause ensued, during which Conrad made up his mind that Ulrich’s sister was no ordinary character. She had ideas of her own, and was not afraid to express them. Then, unable to resist the temptation to speak something else that was flattering, he said:
“I wonder how a person so gifted as yourself should be content to remain a mere copyist.”
“’Tis all one can be in our age,” replied Walburga. “The days of originality are gone by. We need another deluge to blot out whatever mankind has wrought in literature and art; then, after the flood should have subsided, artists and writers might begin anew.”