tremendous
fancy to her face. I ought doubtless to have been humiliated by the
simplicity of his judgment of it, a judgment for which the rendering was
lost in the subject, quite leaving out the element of art. He was like
the innocent reader for whom the story is "really true" and the author
a negligible quantity. He had come to me only because he wanted to
purchase, and I remember being so amused at his attitude, which I had
never seen equally marked in a person of education, that I asked him
why, for the sort of enjoyment he desired, it wouldn't be more to the
point to deal directly with the lady. He stared and blushed at this:
it was plain the idea frightened him. He was an extraordinary
case--personally so modest that I could see it had never occurred to
him. He had fallen in love with a painted sign and seemed content just
to dream of what it stood for. He was the young prince in the legend
or the comedy who loses his heart to the miniature of the out-land
princess. Until I knew him better this puzzled me much--the link was
so missing between his sensibility and his type. He was of course
bewildered by my sketches, which implied in the beholder some sense of
intention and quality; but for one of them, a comparative failure, he
ended by conceiving a preference so arbitrary and so lively that, taking
no second look at the others, he expressed the wish to possess it and
fell into the extremity of confusion over the question of the price.
I simplified that problem, and he went off without having asked me a
direct question about Miss Saunt, yet with his acquisition under his
arm. His delicacy was such that he evidently considered his rights to
be limited; he had acquired none at all in regard to the original of the
picture. There were others--for I was curious about him--that I wanted
him to feel I conceded: I should have been glad of his carrying away a
sense of ground acquired for coming back. To insure this I had probably
only to invite him, and I perfectly recall the impulse that made me
forbear. It operated suddenly from within while he hung about the door
and in spite of the diffident appeal that blinked in his gentle grin. If
he was smitten with Flora's ghost what mightn't be the direct force of
the luminary that could cast such a shadow? This source of radiance,
flooding my poor place, might very well happen to be present the next
time he should turn up. The idea was sharp within me that there were
complication