". . . how free, how fine
To fear almost!—of the limit-line."
He, like her, had suffered some defeat. But think of the minutes in which, with her he worshipped, he "looked and loved, learned and drew, Drew and learned and loved again!" Such moments are not for such as she. She will go back to the household cares—she has her lesson, and it is not the same as Da Vinci's.
"Little girl with the poor coarse hand"
. . . this is her model, from whom she had turned to a cold clay cast. Her business is to understand, not the almost fearful beauty of a thing like this, but "the worth of flesh and blood."
But was not that Da Vinci's business too? Would he not, could she speak with him, proudly tell her so? "Nothing but beauty in a hand." Would the Master have turned from this peasant one? No: she hears him condemn her, laugh her woes to scorn.
"The fool forsooth is all forlorn
Because the beauty she thinks best
Lived long ago or was never born,
Because no beauty bears the test
In this rough peasant hand!"
It was not long before Da Vinci threw aside the faulty pencil, and spent years instead of hours in studying, not the mere external loveliness, but the anatomy of the hand, learning the veritable use
"Of flesh and bone and nerve that make
The poorest coarsest human hand
An object worthy to be scanned
A whole life long for their sole sake."
Just the hand—and all the body still to learn. Is not this the lesson of life—this incompleteness?
"Now the parts and then the whole!"