ive me, princess. My nerves are shaken. Divine
goodness! To see a young girl flying through the air like Simon Magus!
It was enough!"

Francesca laughed gently. Reanda shook his head with slow
disapprobation, and frowned.

"I say the truth," he said. "There is something--I cannot explain. But I
can show you," he added quickly.

He took up his palette and brushes from the chair on which they lay, and
reached the white plastered wall in two steps.

"Paint her," said Francesca, to encourage him.

"Yes, I will show her to you--as I think she is," he answered.

He closed his eyes for a moment, calling up the image before him, then
went back to the chair and took a quantity of colour from a tube which
lay, with half-a-dozen others, in the hollow of the rush seat. They were
not the colours he used for fresco-painting, but had been left there
when he had made a sketch of a head two or three days previously. In a
moment he was before the wall again. It was roughly plastered from the
floor to the lower line of the frescoes. With a long, coarse brush he
began to sketch a gigantic head of a woman. The oil paint lay well on
the rough, dry surface. He worked in great strokes at the full length of
his arm.

"Make her beautiful, at least," said Francesca, watching him.

"Oh, yes--very beautiful," he answered.

He worked rapidly for a few minutes, smiling, as his hand moved, but not
pleasantly. Francesca thought there was an evil look in his face which
she had never seen there before, and that his smile was wicked and
spiteful.

"But you are painting a sunset!" she cried suddenly.

"A sunset? That is her hair. It is red, and she has much of it. Wait a
little."

And he went on. It was certainly something like a sunset, the bright,
waving streamers of the clouds flying far to right and left, and
blending away to the neutral tint of the dry plaster as though to a grey
sky.

"Yes, but it is still a sunset," said Francesca. "I have seen it like
that from the Campagna in winter."

"She is not 'Gloria' for nothing," answered Reanda. "I am making her
glorious. You shall see."

Suddenly, with another tone, he brought out the main features of the
striking face, by throwing in strong shadows from the flaming hair.
Francesca became more interested. The head was colossal, extraordinary,
almost unearthly; the expression was strange.

"What a monster!" exclaimed Francesca at last, as he stood aside, still
touching the enormous sk