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I listened to this pungent recital in silent wonder. It had a painfully plausible sound, and was not inconsistent with certain shy suspicions of my own. My hostess was not only a clever woman, but presumably a generous one. I determined to let my judgment wait upon events. Possibly she was right; but if she was wrong, she was cruelly wrong! Her version of my friend’s eccentricities made me impatient to see him again and examine him in the light of public opinion. On our next meeting I immediately asked him if he knew Mrs. Coventry. He laid his hand on my arm and gave me a sad smile. “Has she taxed YOUR gallantry at last?” he asked. “She’s a foolish woman. She’s frivolous and heartless, and she pretends to be serious and kind. She prattles about Giotto’s second manner and Vittoria Colonna’s liaison with ‘Michael’–one would think that Michael lived across the way and was expected in to take a hand at whist–but she knows as little about art, and about the conditions of production, as I know about Buddhism. She profanes sacred words,” he added more vehemently, after a pause. “She cares for you only as some one to band teacups in that horrible mendacious little parlour of hers, with its trumpery Peruginos! If you can’t dash off a new picture every three days, and let her hand it round among her guests, she tells them in plain English that you are an impostor!”

This attempt of mine to test Mrs. Coventry’s accuracy was made in the course of a late afternoon walk to the quiet old church of San Miniato, on one of the hill-tops which directly overlook the city, from whose gates you are guided to it by a stony and cypress-bordered walk, which seems a very fitting avenue to a shrine. No spot is more propitious to lingering repose than the broad terrace in front of the church, where, lounging against the parapet, you may glance in slow alternation from the black and yellow marbles of the church facade, seamed and cracked with time and wind-sown with a tender flora of its own, down to the full domes and slender towers of Florence and over to the blue sweep of the wide-mouthed cup of mountains into whose hollow the little treasure city has been dropped. I had proposed, as a diversion from the painful memories evoked by Mrs. Coventry’s name, that Theobald should go with me the next evening to the opera, where some rarely-played work was to be given. He declined, as I half expected, for I observed that he regularly kept his evenings in reserve, and never alluded to his manner of passing them. “You have reminded me before,” I said, smiling, “of that charming speech of the Florentine painter in Alfred de Musset’s ‘Lorenzaccio’: ‘I do no harm to anyone. I pass my days in my studio, On Sunday I go to the Annunziata or to Santa Mario; the monks think I have a voice; they dress me in a white gown and a red cap, and I take a share in the choruses; sometimes I do a little solo: these are the only times I go into public. In the evening, I visit my sweetheart; when the night is fine, we pass it on her balcony.’ I don’t know whether you have a sweetheart, or whether she has a balcony. But if you are so happy, it’s certainly better than trying to find a charm in a third- rate prima donna.”

He made no immediate response, but at last he turned to me solemnly. “Can you look upon a beautiful woman with reverent eyes?”

“Really,” I said, “I don’t pretend to be sheepish, but I should be sorry to think I was impudent.” And I asked him what in the world he meant. When at last I had assured him that I could undertake to temper admiration with respect, he informed me, with an air of religious mystery, that it was in his power to introduce me to the most beautiful woman in Italy–“A beauty with a soul!”