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I have killed her!" Lilith descended, and approached him noiselessly. He did not move. She came close to him and said "Are you Karl Wolkenlicht?" His lips moved, but no sound came. "If you are a vampire, and I am a ghost," she said but a low happy laugh alone concluded the sentence. Karl sprang to his feet.
He had represented poor Wolkenlicht as just beginning to recover from a trance, while a group of surgeons, unaware of the signs of returning life, were absorbed in a minute dissection of one of the limbs. At an open door he had painted Lilith passing, with her face buried in a bunch of sweet peas.
If inquiry should be made after Wolkenlicht, and this were discovered anywhere on his premises, would it not be enough to bring him at once to the gallows? Therefore it would be dangerous to bury it in the garden, or in the cellar.
Above all, how was it that Karl Wolkenlicht had, in fact, fallen in love with her before ever he saw her? It was thus Her father was a painter. Belonging thus to the public, it had taken the liberty of re-naming him. Every one called him Teufelsbuerst, or Devilsbrush. It was a name with which, to judge from the nature of his representations, he could hardly fail to be pleased.
Her suspicions were instantly confirmed: the substance employed was only a gummy wash over the paint. The delight she experienced at the discovery threw her into a mischievous humour. "'I will see, she said to herself, 'whether I cannot match Karl Wolkenlicht at this game. "In a closet in the room hung a number of costumes, which Lilith had at different times worn for her father.
The master could see that his pupil was more at ease, and that he was making rapid progress in his art. This did not suit his designs, and he would betake himself to his further schemes. "For this purpose he proceeded first to simulate a friendship for Wolkenlicht, the manifestations of which he gradually increased, until, after a day or two, he asked him to drink wine with him in the evening.
It seemed to Wolkenlicht to amount only to this: that, amidst a thousand distastes, it was a pleasant thing to reproduce on the canvas the forms he beheld around him, modifying them to express the prevailing feelings of his own mind. A more desolate communication between souls than that which then passed between father and daughter could hardly be imagined.
And it was in virtue of this, that Wolkenlicht loved Lilith yet more after he discovered what a grave of misery her unbelief was digging for her within her own soul. For her sake he would bear anything bear even with calmness the torments of his own love; he would stay on, hoping and hoping.
But her father, glancing at her now, as Wolkenlicht had used to do, could not help seeing that she was frightfully pale. She showed no other sign of uneasiness. As soon as he released her, she withdrew, with one more glance, as she passed, at the couch and the figure blocked out in black upon it.
Teufelsbuerst, without philosophising about it, called his preparation simply a love-philtre, a concoction well known by name, but the composition of which was the secret of only a few. Wolkenlicht had, of course, not the least suspicion of the treatment to which he was subjected. Teufelsbuerst was, however, doomed to fresh disappointment.
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