nude.

Renovales lay down on the divan again, and in the twilight he talked
confidentially with Cotoner in a subdued voice, sometimes looking toward
the door as if he feared being overheard.

For some time he had been dreaming of a masterpiece. He had it in his
imagination complete even to the least details. He saw it, closing his
eyes, just at it would be, if he ever succeeded in painting it. It was
Phryne, the famous beauty of Athens, appearing naked before the crowd of
pilgrims on the beach of Delphi. All the suffering humanity of Greece
walked on the shore of the sea toward the famous temple, seeking divine
intervention for the relief of their ills, cripples with distorted
limbs, repulsive lepers, men swollen with dropsy, pale, suffering women,
trembling old men, youths disfigured in hideous expressions, withered
arms like bare bones, shapeless elephant legs, all the phases of a
perverted Nature, the piteous, desperate expressions of human pain. When
they see on the beach Phryne, the glory of Greece, whose beauty was a
national pride, the pilgrims stop and gaze upon her, turning their backs
to the temple, that outlines its marble columns in the background of the
parched mountains; and the beautiful woman, filled with pity by this
procession of suffering, desires to brighten their sadness, to cast a
handful of health and beauty among their wretched furrows, and tears off
her veils, giving them the royal alms of her nakedness. The white,
radiant body is outlined on the dark blue of the sea. The wind scatters
her hair like golden serpents on her ivory shoulders; the waves that die
at her feet, toss upon her stars of foam that make her skin tremble with
the caress from her amber neck down to her rosy feet. The wet sand,
polished and bright as a mirror, reproduces the sovereign nakedness,
inverted and confused in serpentine lines that take on the shimmer of
the rainbow as they disappear. And the pilgrims, on their knees, in the
ecstasy of worship, stretch out their arms toward the mortal goddess,
believing that Beauty and eternal Health have come to meet them.

Renovales sat up and grasped Cotoner's arm as he described his future
picture, and his friend nodded his approval gravely, impressed by the
description.

"Very fine! Sublime, Mariano!"

But the master became dejected again after this flash of enthusiasm.

The task was very difficult. He would have to go and take up quarters on
the shore of the Mediterranean