"What?"
She did not understand; when she had come on this eager errand, no memory of her own fate had retarded or hastened her footsteps.
"Well, you look to take the same flight to the same heights, I suppose?"
"I?"
"Yes, you. You must know you are beautiful. You must know so much?"
A proud light laughed like sunshine over all her face.
"Ah, yes!" she said, with a low, glad breath, and the blaze of a superb triumph in her eyes. "He has painted me in a thousand ways. I shall live as the rose lives, on his canvas—a thing of a day that he can make immortal!"
The keen elfin eyes of the old man sparkled with a malign mirth; he had found what he wanted—as he thought.
"And so, if this dust of oblivion blots out his canvas forever from the world's sight, your beauty will be blotted with it? I see. Well, I can understand how eager you are to have your eagle fly free. The fame of the Farnarina stands only second to the fame of Cleopatra."
"Farnarina? What is that?"