"Guivric," says Holden, "the lady in this three-cornered picture is the lady of my love; and you must tell me how I may win her affections."
Guivric looked at the portrait for some while, scratched off a fleck of paint from it with his finger-nail, and answered:
"There are impediments to your winning this Queen Radegonde. For one thing, she has been dead for thirteen centuries."
"I admit that thirteen is proverbially an unlucky number; but my all-consuming love is not to be intimidated by superstitions."
Guivric thereupon consulted the oldest and most authentic poems, and Guivric admitted:
"Well, perhaps her being dead such an unlucky number of centuries does not matter, after all, because my authorities appear agreed that love defies time and death. Yet it does matter, I suspect, that the woman in this picture was the notion which a dead artist perpetuated of the Queen Radegonde whom he saw in the flesh."
"So would I see her, Guivric."
"Holden, my meaning is more respectable than your meaning. I mean that, if the man labored as a tradesman executing an order, your cause may prosper: but there is the ugly chance that this radiant, slim, gray-eyed girl was born of the man's brain, very much as, even more anciently, they say, King Jove brought forth a gray-eyed daughter to devastate the world with wisdom: and in that case, I fear the worst."
"What, then, is the worst that can happen?"
"Thinking about it too much beforehand," replied Guivric, drily.