and burst into
tears.

I led him homeward with all possible tenderness, but I attempted neither
to check his grief, to restore his equanimity, nor to unsay the hard
truth. When we reached my hotel I tried to induce him to come so.

"We will drink a glass of wine," I said, smiling, "to the completion of
the Madonna."

With a violent effort he held up his head, mused for a moment with a
formidably sombre frown, and then giving me his hand, "I will finish it,"
he cried, "in a month! No, in a fortnight! After all, I have it
_here_!" And he tapped his forehead. "Of course she's old! She can
afford to have it said of her--a woman who has made twenty years pass
like a twelvemonth! Old--old! Why, sir, she shall be eternal!"

I wished to see him safely to his own door, but he waved me back and
walked away with an air of resolution, whistling and swinging his cane. I
waited a moment, and then followed him at a distance, and saw him proceed
to cross the Santa Trinita Bridge. When he reached the middle he
suddenly paused, as if his strength had deserted him, and leaned upon the
parapet gazing over into the river. I was careful to keep him in sight;
I confess that I passed ten very nervous minutes. He recovered himself
at last, and went his way, slowly and with hanging head.

That I had really startled poor Theobald into a bolder use of his long-
garnered stores of knowledge and taste, into the vulgar effort and hazard
of production, seemed at first reason enough for his continued silence
and absence; but as day followed day without his either calling or
sending me a line, and without my meeting him in his customary haunts, in
the galleries, in the Chapel at San Lorenzo, or strolling between the
Arno side and the great hedge-screen of verdure which, along the drive of
the Cascine, throws the fair occupants of barouche and phaeton into such
becoming relief--as for more than a week I got neither tidings nor sight
of him, I began to fear that I had fatally offended him, and that,
instead of giving a wholesome impetus to his talent, I had brutally
paralysed it. I had a wretched suspicion that I had made him ill. My
stay at Florence was drawing to a close, and it was important that,
before resuming my journey, I should assure myself of the truth.
Theobald, to the last, had kept his lodging a mystery, and I was
altogether at a loss where to look for him. The simplest course was to
make inquiry of the beauty of the Mer