‘You were complaining the other day, Mr. Dessart, that the foreigners are making the Italians too modern. Why do you not catch the ghost? He is surely a true antique.’
‘But I am not an impressionist,’ he pleaded.
‘Who is saying anything against impressionists?’ a young man asked in somewhat halting English as he paused beside the group.
‘No one,’ said Dessart; ‘I was merely disclaiming all knowledge of them and their ways. Miss Copley, allow me to present Monsieur Benoit, the last Prix de Rome—he is the man to paint your ghost. He’s an impressionist and paints nothing else.’
‘I suppose you have ghosts enough in the Villa Medici, without having to search for them in the Sabine hills.’
‘Ah, oui, mademoiselle; the Villa Medici has ghosts of many kinds—ghosts of dead hopes and dead ambitions among others.’
‘I should think the ghost of a dead ambition might be too illusive for even an impressionist to catch,’ she returned.
‘Perhaps an impressionist is better acquainted with them than with anything else,’ suggested Dessart, a trifle unkindly.
‘Not when he’s young and a Prix de Rome,’ smiled the woman who wrote.
Mrs. Copley requiring her niece’s presence on the other side of the room, the girl nodded to the group and withdrew. The writer looked after her with an air of puzzled interest.