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“‘At last–at last’?” I repeated, in much amazement. “Do you mean that she has never done so yet?”

“I have not really had–a–a sitting,” said Theobald, speaking very slowly. “I have taken notes, you know; I have got my grand fundamental impression. That’s the great thing! But I have not actually had her as a model, posed and draped and lighted, before my easel.”

What had become for the moment of my perception and my tact I am at a loss to say; in their absence I was unable to repress a headlong exclamation. I was destined to regret it. We had stopped at a turning, beneath a lamp. “My poor friend,” I exclaimed, laying my hand on his shoulder, “you have DAWDLED! She’s an old, old woman– for a Madonna!”

It was as if I had brutally struck him; I shall never forget the long, slow, almost ghastly look of pain, with which he answered me.

“Dawdled?–old, old?” he stammered. “Are you joking?”

“Why, my dear fellow, I suppose you don’t take her for a woman of twenty?”

He drew a long breath and leaned against a house, looking at me with questioning, protesting, reproachful eyes. At last, starting forward, and grasping my arm–“Answer me solemnly: does she seem to you truly old? Is she wrinkled, is she faded, am I blind?”

Then at last I understood the immensity of his illusion how, one by one, the noiseless years had ebbed away and left him brooding in charmed inaction, for ever preparing for a work for ever deferred. It seemed to me almost a kindness now to tell him the plain truth. “I should be sorry to say you are blind,” I answered, “but I think you are deceived. You have lost time in effortless contemplation. Your friend was once young and fresh and virginal; but, I protest, that was some years ago. Still, she has de beaux restes. By all means make her sit for you!” I broke down; his face was too horribly reproachful.

He took off his hat and stood passing his handkerchief mechanically over his forehead. “De beaux restes? I thank you for sparing me the plain English. I must make up my Madonna out of de beaux restes! What a masterpiece she will be! Old–old! Old–old!” he murmured.

“Never mind her age,” I cried, revolted at what I had done, “never mind my impression of her! You have your memory, your notes, your genius. Finish your picture in a month. I pronounce it beforehand a masterpiece, and I hereby offer you for it any sum you may choose to ask.”

He stared, but he seemed scarcely to understand me. “Old–old!” he kept stupidly repeating. “If she is old, what am I? If her beauty has faded, where–where is my strength? Has life been a dream? Have I worshipped too long–have I loved too well?” The charm, in truth, was broken. That the chord of illusion should have snapped at my light accidental touch showed how it had been weakened by excessive tension. The poor fellow’s sense of wasted time, of vanished opportunity, seemed to roll in upon his soul in waves of darkness. He suddenly dropped his head and burst into tears.

I led him homeward with all possible tenderness, but I attempted neither to check his grief, to restore his equanimity, nor to unsay the hard truth. When we reached my hotel I tried to induce him to come so.

“We will drink a glass of wine,” I said, smiling, “to the completion of the Madonna.”

With a violent effort he held up his head, mused for a moment with a formidably sombre frown, and then giving me his hand, “I will finish it,” he cried, “in a month! No, in a fortnight! After all, I have it HERE!” And he tapped his forehead. “Of course she’s old! She can afford to have it said of her–a woman who has made twenty years pass like a twelvemonth! Old–old! Why, sir, she shall be eternal!”