ain, "we desert folk, though we are used to galleries, are a little
diffident about meeting people who live in big mansions. I mean, people
who have not had the desert training that you have had, Sir Chaps. If it
is only a matter of looking at a picture without any social
responsibilities, and that picture a Velasquez, why, we must take the
time, mustn't we, Mary?"

"Yes," Mary assented.

With Mary on one side of him and Jack on the other, the Doge was walking
heavily and slowly.

"At what period of Velasquez's career?" he asked, vacantly.

"When he was young and the subject was middle-aged, a Northerner, with
fair hair and lean muscles under a skin bronzed by the tropics, and the
unquenchable fire of youth in his eyes."

"That ought to be a good Velasquez," said the Doge.

At the bottom step of the flight up to the entrance to the house he
hesitated. He appeared to be very old and very tired. His face had gone
quite pale. The lids hung heavily over his eyes. Jack dropped back in
alarm to assist him; but his color quickly returned and the old challenge
was in his glance as it met Jack's.

"Now for your Velasquez!" he exclaimed, with calm vigor.

Once in the hall, Jack stood to one side of the door of the drawing-room
to let the Doge enter first. As the old man crossed the threshold his
hands were clasped behind him; his shoulders had fallen together, not in
weariness now, but in a kind of dazed, studious expectancy; and he faced
the "Portrait of a Lady."

"This is the Sargent," he said slowly, his lips barely opening in
mechanical and absent comment. "A good Sargent!"

He was as still as the picture in his bowed and earnest gaze into her
eyes, except for an occasional nervous movement of the fingers. All the
surroundings seemed to melt into a neutral background for the two; there
was nothing else in the room but the scholar in his age and the "Portrait
of a Lady" in her youth. Jack saw the Doge's face, its many lines
expressive as through a mist of time, its hills and valleys in the sun
and the shadow of emotions as variable as the mother's in life, speaking
personal resentment and wrong, admiration and tenderness, grievous
inquiry and philosophy, while the only answer was the radiant, "I give! I
give!" Finally, the Doge tightened the clasp of his hands, with a quiver
of his frame, as he turned toward Jack.

"Yes, a really great Sargent--a Sargent of supreme inspiration!" he said.
"Now for your Velasquez!"