a nimbus, and on a painting--a woman's head--which he was copying.
He looked superb like that, and I thought how doubly tempted Rembrandt
would have been by the deep significance as well as by the chiaroscuro
of this interior.

I stamped my foot. Lampron started, and turned half around, narrowing
his eyes as he peered into the darkness.

"Ah, it's you," he said. He rose and came quickly toward me, as if to
prevent me from approaching the table.

"You don't wish me to look?"

He hesitated a moment.

"After all, why not?" he answered.

The copper plate was hardly marked with a few touches of the needle. He
turned the reflector so as to throw all its rays upon the painting.

"O Lampron, what a charming head!"

It was indeed a lovely head; an Italian girl, three quarter face,
painted after the manner of Leonardo, with firm but delicate touches,
and lights and shades of infinite subtlety, and possessing, like all
that master's portraits of women, a straightforward look that responds
to the gazer's, but which he seeks to interrogate in vain. The hair,
brown with golden lights, was dressed in smooth plaits above the
temples. The neck, 1351 somewhat long, emerged from a dark robe broadly
indicated.

"I do not know this, Sylvestre?"

"No, it's an old thing."

"A portrait, of course?"

"My first."

"You never did better; line, color, life, you have got them all."

"You need not tell me that! In one's young days, look you, there are
moments of real inspiration, when some one whispers in the ear and
guides the hand; a lightness of touch, the happy audacity of the
beginner, a wealth of daring never met with again. Would you believe
that I have tried ten times to reproduce that in etching without
success?"

"Why do you try?"

"Yes, that is the question. Why? It's a bit foolish."

"You never could find such a model again; that is one reason."

"Ah, no, you are right. I never could find her again."

"An Italian of rank? a princess, eh?"

"Something like it."

"What has become of her?"

"Ah, no doubt what becomes of all princesses. Fabien, my young friend,
you who still see life through fairy-tales, doubtless you imagine her
happy in her lot--wealthy, spoiled, flattered, speaking with disdainful
lips at nightfall, on the terrace of her villa among the great pines, of
the barbarian from across the Alps who painted her portrait twenty years
since; and, in the same sentence, of her--last new frock from Paris?