“Have you forgotten the anecdote of Rubens, who, when offered a pupil with the recommendation that he was sufficiently advanced in his studies to assist him at once in his backgrounds, laughed, and answered, ‘If the youth was capable of painting backgrounds he did not need his instruction; because the regulation and management of them required the most comprehensive knowledge of the art.’”

“Yes, I am aware that is one of the dogmata of the craft, but Rubens was no more infallible than you or I, and his pictures give me less pleasure than those of any other artist of equal celebrity. Dr. Grey, if I am even a tolerable judge of my own work, the best thing I have yet achieved is the drapery of that form. Perhaps I am inclined to plume myself upon this point, from the fact that it was the opinion of Carlo Maratti that ‘The arrangement of drapery is more difficult than drawing the human figure; because the right effect depends more upon the taste of the artist than upon any given rules.’ That sweep of blue gauze has cost me more toil than everything else on the canvas.”

“Pardon the expression of my curiosity concerning your modes of composition in these singular and quaint creations, 225 for which you have no models; and tell me how this ideal presented itself to your imagination.”

“Dr. Grey, I am not a great genius like Goethe, and unfortunately can not candidly echo his declaration, that, ‘Nothing ever came to me in my sleep.’ I can scarcely tell you when this idea was first born in my busy, tireless brain, but it took form one evening after I had read Charlotte Bronté’s ‘Woman Titan,’ in ‘Shirley,’ and compared it with that glowing description of Jean Paul Richter, ‘And so the Sun stands at the border of the Earth, and looks back on his stately Spring, whose robe-folds are valleys, whose breast-bouquet is gardens, whose blush is a vernal evening, and who, when she rises, will be Summer.’ Still it was vague, and eluded me, until I found somewhere in my most desultory reading, an account of ‘Espendérmad,’ one of the six angels of Ormuzd, to whom was entrusted the guardianship of the earth. That night I dreamed that I stood under a vine at Schiraz, gathering golden-tinted grapes, when a voice arrested me, and, looking over my shoulder, I saw that face peeping at me across a hedge of crimson roses. Next day I sketched the features as they had appeared in my dream, but I was not fully satisfied, and waited and pondered. Finally, I read ‘Madonna Mia,’ and then all was as you see it now, startlingly distinct and palpable.”

“Why did you not select some dusky-haired, dusky-eyed, olive-tinted oriental type, instead of a blonde who might safely venture into Valhalla as a genuine Celtic Iduna?”

“With the exception of the yellow locks, I suspect the face of my ‘Espendérmad’ might easily be matched among the maidens of the Caucasus, who furnish the most perfect types of Circassian beauty. You know there is a tradition that when Leonardo da Vinci chanced to meet a man with an expression of character that he wished to make use of in his work, he followed him until he was able to delineate the face on canvas; but, on the contrary, the countenances I paint present themselves to my imagination, and pursue me inexorably until I put them into pigment. I do not possess ideals,—they seize and possess me, teasing me for form and 226 color, and forcing me to object them on canvas. Such is the modus operandi of whims that give me my ‘Espendérmad’ praying to the Sun for benisons on the Earth, which she is appointed to guard. Ah, if like the lambkins and birds, I, too, could creep to the starry border of her azure robe, and lay my weary head down and find repose. Some day, if my mind ever grows calm enough, I want to paint a picture of Rest, that I can hang on my wall and look upon when I am worn out in body and soul, when, indeed,—

‘My feet are wearied, and my hands are tired,
My heart oppressed,
And I desire, what I long desired,
Rest,—only Rest.’”

“My dear madam, unless you speedily change your present mode of life, you will not paint that contemplated picture, for a long rest will soon overtake you.”

A gleam that was nearer akin to joy than any expression he had yet seen, passed from eye to lip, and she answered, almost eagerly,—

“If that be true, it offers a premium for the continuance of habits you condemn so strenuously; but I dare not hope it, and I beg of you not to tantalize me with vain expectations of a release that may yet be far, far distant.”