Yet even at that time, and in the midst of the freest intercourse with German, Spanish, and other officers in Flanders and Brabant, young knights and light-hearted priests on the Rhine, the Main, the Danube, the Weser, and the Elbe, whose purses the pretty, vivacious girl, with the shining raven hair and bright blue eyes, the mistress of her art, seemed to their owners worthy to empty, she had by no means forgotten Lienhard.  This wrought mischief to many a gay gentleman of aristocratic lineage in the great imperial and commercial cities; for it afforded Kuni special pleasure to try her power upon Lienhard’s equals in rank.  When she went on with the company, more than one patrician had good reason to remember her with regret; for she, who shared the lion’s portion of her earnings with her companions or flung it to the poor, was insatiably avaricious toward these admirers.

The weaker she found many of them, the higher, in her opinion, rose the image of him who had made her feel his manly strength of resistance so cruelly.  His stern, inexorable nature seemed to her worthy of hate, yet for three whole years the longing for him scarcely left her heart at peace an hour.

During this whole period she had not met him.  Not until after she had come to Augsburg, where Loni’s company was to give several performances before the assembled Reichstag, did she see him again.  Once she even succeeded in attracting his gaze, and this was done in a way which afforded her great satisfaction.  His beautiful wife, clad in costly velvet robes, was walking by his side with eyes decorously downcast; but he had surely recognised her—­there was no doubt of that.  Yet he omitted to inform his wife, even by a look, whom he had met here.  Kuni watched the proud couple a long time, and, with the keen insight of a loving heart, told herself that he would have pointed her out to Frau Katharina, if he did not remember her in some way—­either in kindness or in anger.

This little discovery had sufficed to transfigure, as it were, the rest of the day, and awaken a throng of new hopes and questions.

Even now she did not desire to win Frau Katharina’s husband from her.  She freely acknowledged that the other’s beauty was tenfold greater than her own; but whether the gifts of love which the woman with the cloudless, aristocratic composure could offer to her husband were not like the beggar’s pence, compared with the overflowing treasure of ardent passion which she cherished for Lienhard, was a question to which she believed there could be but a single answer.  Was this lady, restricted by a thousand petty scruples, as well as by her stiff, heavy gala robes, a genuine woman at all?  Ah! if he would only for once cast aside the foolish considerations which prevented him also from being a genuine man, clasp her, whom he knew was his own, in his arms, and hold her as long as he desired, he should learn what a strong, free, fearless woman, whose pliant limbs were as unfettered