"You are quite right," said the Frenchman. "From the classic point of
view your mother was and is the most beautiful dark woman in the world.
For myself--well in the first place, you are her son, and secondly I am
an artist and not a critic. The painter's tongue is his brush and his
words are colours."

"What were you going to say about my mother?" asked Orsino with some
curiosity.

"Oh--nothing. Well, if you must hear it, the Princess represents my
classical ideal, but not my personal ideal. I have admired some one else
more."

"Donna Faustina?" enquired Orsino.

"Ah well, my friend--she is my wife, you see. That always makes a great
difference in the degree of admiration--"

"Generally in the opposite direction," Orsino observed in a tone of
elderly unbelief.

Gouache had just put his brush into his mouth and held it between his
teeth as a poodle carries a stick, while he used his thumb on the
canvas. The modern painter paints with everything, not excepting his
fingers. He glanced at his model and then at his work, and got his
effect before he answered.

"You are very hard upon marriage," he said quietly. "Have you tried it?"