scription."

"This woman's beauty," he went on, "is a lesson, a morality, a poem! It's
my daily study."

Of course, after this, I lost no time in reminding him of what, before we
parted, had taken the shape of a promise. "I feel somehow," he had said,
"as if it were a sort of violation of that privacy in which I have always
contemplated her beauty. This is friendship, my friend. No hint of her
existence has ever fallen from my lips. But with too great a familiarity
we are apt to lose a sense of the real value of things, and you perhaps
will throw some new light upon it and offer a fresher interpretation."

We went accordingly by appointment to a certain ancient house in the
heart of Florence--the precinct of the Mercato Vecchio--and climbed a
dark, steep staircase, to the very summit of the edifice. Theobald's
beauty seemed as loftily exalted above the line of common vision as his
artistic ideal was lifted above the usual practice of men. He passed
without knocking into the dark vestibule of a small apartment, and,
flinging open an inner door, ushered me into a small saloon. The room
seemed mean and sombre, though I caught a glimpse of white curtains
swaying gently at an open window. At a table, near a lamp, sat a woman
dressed in black, working at a piece of embroidery. As Theobald entered
she looked up calmly, with a smile; but seeing me she made a movement of
surprise, and rose with a kind of stately grace. Theobald stepped
forward, took her hand and kissed it, with an indescribable air of
immemorial usage. As he bent his head she looked at me askance, and I
thought she blushed.

"Behold the Serafina!" said Theobald, frankly, waving me forward. "This
is a friend, and a lover of the arts," he added, introducing me. I
received a smile, a curtsey, and a request to be seated.

The most beautiful woman in Italy was a person of a generous Italian type
and of a great simplicity of demeanour. Seated again at her lamp, with
her embroidery, she seemed to have nothing whatever to say. Theobald,
bending towards her in a sort of Platonic ecstasy, asked her a dozen
paternally tender questions as to her health, her state of mind, her
occupations, and the progress of her embroidery, which he examined
minutely and summoned me to admire. It was some portion of an
ecclesiastical vestment--yellow satin wrought with an elaborate design of
silver and gold. She made answer in a full rich voice, but with a
brevity whi