“Your betrothed has Titian hair; she is a little tall, but you are tall, too. Such a pose of head as she has one might look for with a candle. You must have noticed that there is something swan-like in her movements; I have even called her ‘The Swan.’”
Pan Ignas laughed as sincerely and joyously as a man does when people praise that which he loves most in life, and said with a shade of boastfulness,—
“‘La Perla,’ do you remember?”
Svirski looked at him with a certain surprise.
“There is such a picture by Raphael in Madrid, in the Museum del Prado,” answered he. “Why do you mention ‘La Perla’?”
“It seems to me that I heard of it from those ladies,” said Pan Ignas, beaten from the track somewhat.
“It may be, for I have a copy of my own making in my studio Via Margutta.”
Pan Ignas said in spirit that there was need to be more guarded in repeating words from Pani Bronich; and after a time he rose to depart, for he was going to his betrothed for the evening. Svirski soon followed, leaving with Marynia the address of his Warsaw studio, and begging that Pan Stanislav would meet him in the matter of the funeral as soon as possible.
In fact, Pan Stanislav went to him next morning. Svirski’s studio was a kind of glass hall, attached, like the nest of a swallow, to the roof of one in a number of many storied houses, and visitors had to reach him by separate stairs winding like those in a tower. But the artist had perfect freedom there, and did not close his door evidently, for Pan Stanislav, in ascending, heard a dull sound of iron, and a bass voice singing,—
“Spring blows on the world warmly;