'No matter,' said Monna Lisa, 'draw closer the curtain. It is early yet. I am not tired.'
'I have painted enough,' he said, throwing down his brush.
'You will not finish my portrait?'
'Why not?' he cried hastily, as if alarmed. 'Will you not come to me when you return?'
'I will come. But shall I be the same? You have told me that faces, especially the faces of women, quickly change.'
'I long to finish it. But sometimes to me it seems impossible?'
'Impossible?' wondered La Gioconda. 'Ay, they tell me you finish nothing because you are always seeking the impossible.'
In these words he fancied a tender reproach.
'The moment has come!' he thought.
She rose and said with her usual calm:—