ured; 'but now and here my reason _shall_ conquer.'

And I stood and gazed at the veil. During all the time I could hear
every word of the talk between Wilderspin, Sleaford, and my mother
before the picture in the other room.

'Awfully fine picture,' said Sleaford, 'but the Queen there--Isis:
more like a European face than an Egyptian. I've been to Egypt a good
deal, don't you know?'

'This is not an historical painting, my lord. As Philip Aylwin says,
"the only soul-satisfying function of art is to give what Zoroaster
calls 'apparent pictures of unapparent realities.'" Perfect beauty
has no nationality; hers has none. All the perfections of woman
culminate in her. How can she then be disfigured by paltry
characteristics of this or that race or nation? In looking at that
group, my lord, nationality is forgotten, and should be forgotten.
She is the type of Ideal Beauty whose veil can never be raised save
by the two angels of all true art, Faith and Love. She is the type of
Nature, too, whose secret, as Philip Aylwin says, "no science but
that of Faith and Love can read."'

'Seems to be the type of a good deal; but it's all right, don't you
know? Awfully fine picture! Awfully fine woman!' said Sleaford in a
conciliatory tone. 'She's a good deal fairer, though, than any
Eastern women I've seen; but then I suppose she has worn a veil al
her life up to now. Most of 'em take sly peeps, and let in the hot
Oriental sun, and that tans 'em, don't you know?'

'And the original of this face?' I heard my mother say in a voice
that seemed agitated; 'could you tell me something about the original
of this remarkable face?' 'The model?' said Wilderspin. 'We are not
often asked about our models, but a model like that would endow
mediocrity itself with genius, for, though apparently, and by way of
beneficent illusion, the daughter of an earthly costermonger, she was
a wanderer from another and a better world. She is not more beautiful
here than when I saw her first in the sunlight on that memorable day,
at the corner of Essex Street, Strand, bare-headed, her shoulders
shining like patches of polished ivory here and there through the
rents in her tattered dress, while she stood gazing before her,
murmuring a verse of Scripture, perfectly unconscious whether she was
dressed in rags or velvet; her eyes--'

'The eyes--it _is_ the eyes, don't you know--it is the eyes that are
not quite right,' said Sleaford. 'Blue eyes with black eyelas