“There it is! I want her to sit to me. Giovanni Vespucci wants me to paint him a picture of Oedipus and Antigone at Colonos, as he has expounded it to me: I have a fancy for the subject, and I want Bardo and his daughter to sit for it. Now, you ask them; and then I’ll put the likeness into Ariadne.”
“Agreed, if I can prevail with them. And your price for the Bacchus and Ariadne?”
“Baie! If you get them to let me paint them, that will pay me. I’d rather not have your money: you may pay for the case.”
“And when shall I sit for you?” said Tito; “for if we have one likeness, we must have two.”
“I don’t want your likeness; I’ve got it already,” said Piero, “only I’ve made you look frightened. I must take the fright out of it for Bacchus.”
As he was speaking, Piero laid down the book and went to look among some paintings, propped with their faces against the wall. He returned with an oil-sketch in his hand.
“I call this as good a bit of portrait as I ever did,” he said, looking at it as he advanced. “Yours is a face that expresses fear well, because it’s naturally a bright one. I noticed it the first time I saw you. The rest of the picture is hardly sketched; but I’ve painted you in thoroughly.”
Piero turned the sketch, and held it towards Tito’s eyes. He saw himself with his right-hand uplifted, holding a wine-cup, in the attitude of triumphant joy, but with his face turned away from the cup with an expression of such intense fear in the dilated eyes and pallid lips, that he felt a cold stream through his veins, as if he were being thrown into sympathy with his imaged self.
“You are beginning to look like it already,” said Piero, with a short laugh, moving the picture away again. “He’s seeing a ghost—that fine young man. I shall finish it some day, when I’ve settled what sort of ghost is the most terrible—whether it should look solid, like a dead man come to life, or half transparent, like a mist.”
Tito, rather ashamed of himself for a sudden sensitiveness strangely opposed to his usual easy self-command, said carelessly—