own surprise falling very honestly in love. So
accustomed was I to the attraction of false lights that I said to myself
often in the earlier stages of the malady, "This will pass like the
others," not realising that I was entering upon the one great passion of
my life, which all my later experience would but deepen, and death
itself, if the soul be immortal, will have no power to quench.

II

APOLLO PROMISES

Little we see of Nature that is ours.

* * *

It moves us not,--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

W. WORDSWORTH.

Raphael, at the period of which I write, had but one mistress,--his
art,--and after finishing the Sposalizio he withdrew from the society of
the Dovizios, painting most assiduously. I remember that his model was
a pretty maid of seven years, named Margherita, the child of one of
Chigi's servants, as playful and as ignorant as a little fawn. The
startled look in her eyes, when spoken to by any one but Raphael,
reminded me of some wild creature of the woods. But with him she was
never shy,--singing and prattling the livelong day with the most
charming and naive affection. While Raphael painted, Bernardo Dovizio,
who apparently regretted having wounded him, came from time to time to
lend him books, much deploring that one so gifted by nature should be
unread in the classics.

His daughter watched them from a distance, and when Raphael left his
easel would steal near and study the picture or chat with me and with
the little Margherita. On such occasions the child, usually merry and
loving, would sulk and scowl unhandsomely, and though Maria Dovizio was
sweet and generous to her, she showed an unreasoning prejudice amounting
to discourtesy, for which at first I was at a loss to account. I mind me
that she was present when I tied the bunch of orange blossoms to
Raphael's mahl stick, and after the visitors had left the studio the
child, believing that the flowers were the gift of the Signorina
Dovizio, tore them from the rod and trampled them beneath her feet.

When I chid her for such savage behaviour Margherita burst into tears
and cried out passionately that Raphael was her friend, and that the
strange lady had no business to try to steal him from her. Seeing her so
unrea