"And what will you call it?" she asked, "but what is the matter with you, are you ill?"

"I am afraid--" he answered with a consuming look fixed on the beautiful woman in furs, "but let us talk of the picture."

"Yes, let us talk about the picture."

"I imagine the G.o.ddess of love as having descended from Mount Olympus for the sake of some mortal man. And always cold in this modern world of ours, she seeks to keep her sublime body warm in a large heavy fur and her feet in the lap of her lover. I imagine the favorite of a beautiful despot, who whips her slave, when she is tired of kissing him, and the more she treads him underfoot, the more insanely he loves her. And so I shall call the picture: _Venus in Furs_."

The painter paints slowly, but his pa.s.sion grows more and more rapidly. I am afraid he will end up by committing suicide. She plays with him and propounds riddles to him which he cannot solve, and he feels his blood congealing in the process, but it amuses her.

During the sitting she nibbles at candies, and rolls the paper-wrappers into little pellets with which she bombards him.

"I am glad you are in such good humor," said the painter, "but your face has lost the expression which I need for my picture."

"The expression which you need for your picture," she replied, smiling. "Wait a moment."

She rose, and dealt me a blow with the whip. The painter looked at her with stupefaction, and a child-like surprise showed on his face, mingled with disgust and admiration.

While whipping me, Wanda's face acquired more and more of the cruel, contemptuous character, which so haunts and intoxicates me.

"Is this the expression you need for your picture?" she exclaimed.

The painter lowered his look in confusion before the cold ray of her eye.

"It is the expression--" he stammered, "but I can't paint now--"

"What?" said Wanda, scornfully, "perhaps I can help you?"

"Yes--" cried the German, as if taken with madness, "whip me too."

"Oh! With pleasure," she replied, shrugging her shoulders, "but if I am to whip you I want to do it in sober earnest."

"Whip me to death," cried the painter.

"Will you let me tie you?" she asked, smiling.

"Yes--" he moaned--

Wanda left the room for a moment, and returned with ropes.

"Well--are you still brave enough to put yourself into the power of Venus in Furs, the beautiful despot, for better or worse?" she began ironically.

"Yes, tie me," the painter replied dully. Wanda tied his hands on his back and drew a rope through his arms and a second one around his body, and fettered him to the cross-bars of the window. Then she rolled back the fur, seized the whip, and stepped in front of him.

The scene had a grim attraction for me, which I cannot describe. I felt my heart beat, when, with a smile, she drew back her arm for the first blow, and the whip hissed through the air. He winced slightly under the blow. Then she let blow after blow rain upon him, with her mouth half-opened and her teeth flashing between her red lips, until he finally seemed to ask for mercy with his piteous, blue eyes. It was indescribable.

She is sitting for him now, alone. He is working on her head.

She has posted me in the adjoining room behind a heavy curtain, where I can't be seen, but can see everything.

What does she intend now?

Is she afraid of him? She has driven him insane enough to be sure, or is she hatching a new torment for me? My knees tremble.

They are talking. He has lowered his voice so that I cannot understand a word, and she replies in the same way. What is the meaning of this? Is there an understanding between them?

I suffer frightful torments; my heart seems about to burst.

He kneels down before her, embraces her, and presses his head against her breast, and she--in her heartlessness--laughs--and now I hear her saying aloud:

"Ah! You need another application of the whip."

"Woman! G.o.ddess! Are you without a heart--can't you love," exclaimed the German, "don't you even know, what it means to love, to be consumed with desire and pa.s.sion, can't you even imagine what I suffer? Have you no pity for me?"

"No!" she replied proudly and mockingly, "but I have the whip."

She drew it quickly from the pocket of her fur-coat, and struck him in the face with the handle. He rose, and drew back a couple of paces.

"Now, are you ready to paint again?" she asked indifferently. He did not reply, but again went to the easel and took up his brush and palette.

The painting is marvellously successful. It is a portrait which as far as the likeness goes couldn't be better, and at the same time it seems to have an ideal quality. The colors glow, are supernatural; almost diabolical, I would call them.

The painter has put all his sufferings, his adoration, and all his execration into the picture.

Now he is painting me; we are alone together for several hours every day. To-day he suddenly turned to me with his vibrant voice and said:

"You love this woman?"

"Yes."

"I also love her." His eyes were bathed in tears. He remained silent for a while, and continued painting.

"We have a mountain at home in Germany within which she dwells," he murmured to himself. "She is a demon."

The picture is finished. She insisted on paying him for it, munificently, in the manner of queens.

"Oh, you have already paid me," he said, with a tormented smile, refusing her offer.

Before he left, he secretly opened his portfolio, and let me look inside. I was startled. Her head looked at me as if out of a mirror and seemed actually to be alive.

"I shall take it along," he said, "it is mine; she can't take it away from me. I have earned it with my heart's blood."