"What sweet eyes you have!" he said, "The sweetest, the most trusting, the most childlike eyes I have ever seen! It would be impossible to paint such eyes, unless one's brushes were Raffaelle's, dipped in holy water. Not that I believe very much in holy water as a painter's medium! "He laughed,—he had a well-shaped mouth and was fond of smiling, in order that he might show his even pearly teeth, which contrasted becomingly with his dark moustache. "Yes, my Angela has beautiful eyes,—and such soft, pretty hair!" and he caressed it gently, "like little golden tendrils with a beam of the sunlight caught in it! Is not that a pretty compliment? I think I ought to have been a poet instead of a painter!"
"You are both," said Angela fondly, with a little sigh of rest and pleasure as she nestled in his arms—"You will be the greatest artist of your time when you paint large subjects instead of small ones."
His tender hold of her relaxed a little.
"You think 'Phillida et les Roses' a small subject?" he asked, with a touch of petulance in his tone, "Surely if a small study is perfect, it is better than a large one which is imperfect?"
"Of course it is!" replied the girl quickly—"By smallness I did not mean the size of the canvas,—I meant the character of the subject."
"There is nothing small in the beauty of woman!" declared Varillo, with an enthusiastic air—"Her form is divine! Her delicious flesh tints—her delicate curves—her amorous dimples—her exquisite seductiveness—combined with her touching weakness—these qualities make of woman the one,—the only subject for a painter's brush, when the painter is a man!"
Involuntarily Angela thought of "Pon-Pon," who had posed for the "Phillida," and a little shiver ran over her nerves like a sudden wind playing on the chords of an AEolian harp. Gently she withdrew herself from her lover's embrace.
"And when the painter is a woman, should the only subject for her brush be the physical beauty of man?" she asked.
Varillo gave an airy gesture of remonstrance.
"Carissima mia! You shock me! How can you suggest such a thing! The two sexes differ in tastes and aspirations as absolutely as in form. Man is an unfettered creature,—he must have his liberty, even if it reaches license; woman is his dependent. That is Nature's law. Man is the conqueror—woman is his conquest! We cannot alter these things. That is one reason for the prejudice existing against woman's work—if it excels that of man, we consider it a kind of morbid growth—an unnatural protuberance on the face of the universe. In fact, it is a wrong balance of the intellectual forces, which in their action, should always remain on the side of man."