regret it. We had stopped at a turning,
beneath a lamp. "My poor friend," I exclaimed, laying my hand on his
shoulder, "you have _dawdled_! She's an old, old woman--for a Madonna!"

It was as if I had brutally struck him; I shall never forget the long,
slow, almost ghastly look of pain, with which he answered me.

"Dawdled?--old, old?" he stammered. "Are you joking?"

"Why, my dear fellow, I suppose you don't take her for a woman of
twenty?"

He drew a long breath and leaned against a house, looking at me with
questioning, protesting, reproachful eyes. At last, starting forward,
and grasping my arm--"Answer me solemnly: does she seem to you truly old?
Is she wrinkled, is she faded, am I blind?"

Then at last I understood the immensity of his illusion how, one by one,
the noiseless years had ebbed away and left him brooding in charmed
inaction, for ever preparing for a work for ever deferred. It seemed to
me almost a kindness now to tell him the plain truth. "I should be sorry
to say you are blind," I answered, "but I think you are deceived. You
have lost time in effortless contemplation. Your friend was once young
and fresh and virginal; but, I protest, that was some years ago. Still,
she has _de beaux restes_. By all means make her sit for you!" I broke
down; his face was too horribly reproachful.

He took off his hat and stood passing his handkerchief mechanically over
his forehead. "_De beaux restes_? I thank you for sparing me the plain
English. I must make up my Madonna out of _de beaux restes_! What a
masterpiece she will be! Old--old! Old--old!" he murmured.

"Never mind her age," I cried, revolted at what I had done, "never mind
my impression of her! You have your memory, your notes, your genius.
Finish your picture in a month. I pronounce it beforehand a masterpiece,
and I hereby offer you for it any sum you may choose to ask."

He stared, but he seemed scarcely to understand me. "Old--old!" he kept
stupidly repeating. "If she is old, what am I? If her beauty has faded,
where--where is my strength? Has life been a dream? Have I worshipped
too long--have I loved too well?" The charm, in truth, was broken. That
the chord of illusion should have snapped at my light accidental touch
showed how it had been weakened by excessive tension. The poor fellow's
sense of wasted time, of vanished opportunity, seemed to roll in upon his
soul in waves of darkness. He suddenly dropped his head