flung away on Nature's trash, leaves, insects, grubs,
and on barren letters; but, having bowels, I did perforce restrain, and
as it were, dam my better feelings, and looked kindly at the work to
see how it might be bettered; and said I, 'Sith Heaven for our sins
hath doomed us to spend time, and soul, and colour on great letters and
little beetles, omitting such small fry as saints and heroes, their
acts and passions, why not present the scum naturally?' I told her 'the
grapes I saw, walking abroad, did hang i' the air, not stick in a wall;
and even these insects,' quo' I, 'and Nature her slime in general, pass
not their noxious lives wedged miserably in metal prisons like flies
in honey-pots and glue-pots, but do crawl or hover at large, infesting
air.' 'Ah my dear friend,' says she, 'I see now whither you drive; but
this ground is gold; whereon we may not shade.' 'Who said so?' quoth
I. 'All teachers of this craft,' says she; and (to make an end o' me at
once, I trow) 'Gerard himself!' 'That for Gerard himself,' quoth I, 'and
all the gang; gi'e me a brush!'

"Then chose I, to shade her fruit and reptiles, a colour false in
nature, but true relatively to that monstrous ground of glaring gold;
and in five minutes out came a bunch of raspberries, stalk and all, and
a'most flew in your mouth; likewise a butterfly grub she had so truly
presented as might turn the stoutest stomach. My lady she flings her
arms round my neck, and says she, 'Oh!'"

"Did she now?"

"The little love!" observed Denys, succeeding at last in wedging in a
word.

Margaret Van Eyck stared at him; and then smiled. She went on to tell
them how from step to step she had been led on to promise to resume the
art she had laid aside with a sigh when her brothers died, and to paint
the Madonna once more--with Margaret for model. Incidentally she even
revealed how girls are turned into saints. "Thy hair is adorable," said
I. "Why, 'tis red," quo' she. "Ay," quoth I, "but what a red! how brown!
how glossy! most hair is not worth a straw to us painters; thine the
artist's very hue. But thy violet eyes, which smack of earth, being now
languid for lack of one Gerard, now full of fire in hopes of the same
Gerard, these will I lift to heaven in fixed and holy meditation, and
thy nose, which doth already somewhat aspire that way (though not so
piously as Reicht's), will I debase a trifle, and somewhat enfeeble thy
chin."

"Enfeeble her chin? Alack! what may th