"And the Loggia?"
"I never paid much attention to it."
"That surprises me. Those little pictures are my favourites of all Raphael's work. For those and the Psyche, I would give everything else."
Miriam looked at him inquiringly.
"Are you again thinking of the subjects?" he asked.
"Yes. I can't help it. I have avoided them, because I knew how impossible it was for me to judge them only as art."
"Then you have the same difficulty with nearly all Italian pictures?"
She hesitated; but, without turning her eyes to him, said at length:
"I can't easily explain to you the distinction there is for me between the Old Testament and the New. I was taught almost exclusively out of the Old—at least, it seems so to me. I have had to study the New for myself, and it helps rather than hinders my enjoyment of pictures taken from it. The religion of my childhood was one of bitterness and violence and arbitrary judgment and hatred."
"Ah, but there is quite another side to the Old Testament—those parts of it, at all events, that are illustrated up in the Loggia. Will you come up there with me?"