"For Heaven's sake, do not attempt to render it any more horrible! Put it away, and finish this lovely Greek face. Oh, how I envy you your talent for music and drawing! Nature gifted you rarely!"
"No! she merely gave me an intense love of beauty, which constantly impels me to embody, in melody or coloring, the glorious images which the contemplation of beauty creates in my soul. Alas! I am not a genius. If I were I might hope to achieve an immortal renown. Gladly would I pay its painful and dangerous price!" She placed the drawing of Mors in her portfolio and began to touch lightly an unfinished head of Sappho.
"Ah, Clara, how connoisseurs would carp at this portrait of the
'Lesbian Muse'! My guardian, for one, would sneer, superbly."
"Why, pray? It is perfectly beautiful!"
"Because, forsooth, it is no low-browed, swarthy Greek. I have a penchant for high, broad, expansive foreheads, which are antagonistic to all the ancient models of beauty. Low foreheads characterize the antique; but who can fancy 'violet-crowned, immortal Sappho,'
"'With that gloriole
Of ebon hair, on calmed brows,'
other than I have drawn her!" She held up the paper, and smiled triumphantly.
In truth, it was a face of rare loveliness; of oval outline, with delicate yet noble features, whose expression seemed the reflex of the divine afflatus. The uplifted eyes beamed with the radiance of inspiration; the full, ripe lips were just parted; the curling hair clustered with child-like simplicity round the classic head; and the exquisitely formed hands clasped a lyre.
"Beulah, don't you think the eyes are most too wild?" suggested
Clara timidly.
"What? for a poetess! Remember poesy hath madness in it," answered
Beulah, still looking earnestly at her drawing.