But Karl soon reassured her; and a few good blows of the axe
revealed a very different core to that which Teufelsbuerst supposed to be
in it. Karl broke it into pieces, and with Lilith's help, who insisted on
carrying her share, the whole was soon at the bottom of the Moldau and
every trace of its ever having existed removed. Before morning, too, the
form of Lilith had dawned anew in every picture. There was no time to
restore to its former condition the one Karl had first altered; for in it
the changes were all that they seemed; nor indeed was he capable of
restoring it in the master's style; but they put it quite out of the way,
and hoped that sufficient time might elapse before the painter thought of
it again.
"When they had done, and Lilith, for all his entreaties, would remain with
him no longer, Karl took his former clothes with him, and having spent the
rest of the night in his old room, dressed in them in the morning. When
Teufelsbuerst entered his studio next day, there sat Karl, as if nothing
had happened, finishing the drawing on which he had been at work when the
fit of insensibility came upon him.
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