ull crop seem to
have difficulty in managing their mouths. Some draw in their lips with
that air of unnatural sternness observable in rough weather among
passengers on board ship, just before they relinquish the struggle and
retire from public life. Others contract their mouths to the shape of a
heart, while there are yet others who lose control of the pendant lower
lip and are content to look like idiots, while expecting the hairy
growth which is to make them look like men. Orsino had chosen the least
objectionable idiosyncrasy and had elected to be of a stern countenance.
When he forgot himself he was singularly handsome, and Gouache lay in
wait for his moments of forgetfulness.

"You are quite right," said the Frenchman. "From the classic point of
view your mother was and is the most beautiful dark woman in the world.
For myself--well in the first place, you are her son, and secondly I am
an artist and not a critic. The painter's tongue is his brush and his
words are colours."

"What were you going to say about my mother?" asked Orsino with some
curiosity.

"Oh--nothing. Well, if you must hear it, the Princess represents my
classical ideal, but not my personal ideal. I have admired some one else
more."

"Donna Faustina?" enquired Orsino.

"Ah well, my friend--she is my wife, you see. That always makes a great
difference in the degree of admiration--"

"Generally in the opposite direction," Orsino observed in a tone of
elderly unbelief.

Gouache had just put his brush into his mouth and held it between his
teeth as a poodle carries a stick, while he used his thumb on the
canvas. The modern painter paints with everything, not excepting his
fingers. He glanced at his model and then at his work, and got his
effect before he answered.

"You are very hard upon marriage," he said quietly. "Have you tried it?"

"Not yet. I will wait as long as possible, before I do. It is not every
one who has your luck."

"There was something more than luck in my marriage. We loved each other,
it is true, but there were difficulties--you have no idea what
difficulties there were. But Faustina was brave and I caught a little
courage from her. Do you know that when the Serristori barracks were
blown up she ran out alone to find me merely because she thought I might
have been killed? I found her in the ruins, praying for me. It was
sublime."

"I have heard that. She was very brave--"

"And I a poor Zonave--and a poorer painter