nt on, "is my greatest find so
far." They were before the crafty countenance of Caesar Borgia painted
by Pinturrichio.

"What a strange face!" commented Mrs. Sohlberg, naively. "I didn't
know any one had ever painted him. He looks somewhat like an artist
himself, doesn't he?" She had never read the involved and quite Satanic
history of this man, and only knew the rumor of his crimes and
machinations.

"He was, in his way," smiled Cowperwood, who had had an outline of his
life, and that of his father, Pope Alexander VI., furnished him at the
time of the purchase. Only so recently had his interest in Caesar
Borgia begun. Mrs. Sohlberg scarcely gathered the sly humor of it.

"Oh yes, and here is Mrs. Cowperwood," she commented, turning to the
painting by Van Beers. "It's high in key, isn't it?" she said,
loftily, but with an innocent loftiness that appealed to him. He liked
spirit and some presumption in a woman. "What brilliant colors! I like
the idea of the garden and the clouds."

She stepped back, and Cowperwood, interested only in her, surveyed the
line of her back and the profile of her face. Such co-ordinated
perfection of line and color!

"Where every motion weaves and sings," he might have commented. Instead
he said: "That was in Brussels. The clouds were an afterthought, and
that vase on the wall, too."

"It's very good, I think," commented Mrs. Sohlberg, and moved away.

"How do you like this Israels?" he asked. It was the painting called
"The Frugal Meal."

"I like it," she said, "and also your Bastien Le-Page," referring to
"The Forge." "But I think your old masters are much more interesting.
If you get many more you ought to put them together in a room. Don't
you think so? I don't care for your Gerome very much." She had a cute
drawl which he considered infinitely alluring.

"Why not?" asked Cowperwood.

"Oh, it's rather artificial; don't you think so? I like the color, but
the women's bodies are too perfect, I should say. It's very pretty,
though."

He had little faith in the ability of women aside from their value as
objects of art; and yet now and then, as in this instance, they
revealed a sweet insight which sharpened his own. Aileen, he
reflected, would not be capable of making a remark such as this. She
was not as beautiful now as this woman--not as alluringly simple,
naive, delicious, nor yet as wise. Mrs. Sohlberg, he reflected
shrewdly, had a kind of fool for a husband.