the girl's Italian imagination it was a happy omen. The stranger
seemed to her a celestial messenger, speaking the language of her own
country. He thus unconsciously put her under the spell of childhood's
memories, while in her heart there dawned another feeling as fresh, as
pure as her own innocence. For a short, very short moment, she was
motionless and dreamy, as though she were plunged in boundless
thought. Then she blushed at having allowed her absorption to be
noticed, exchanged one soft and rapid glance with the wounded man, and
fled with the vision of him still before her eyes.

The next day was not a class-day, but Ginevra came to the studio, and
the prisoner was free to sit beside her easel. Servin, who had a
sketch to finish, played the part of mentor to the two young people,
who talked to each other chiefly in Corsican. The soldier related the
sufferings of the retreat from Moscow; for, at nineteen years of age,
he had made the passage of the Beresins, and was almost the last man
left of his regiment. He described, in words of fire, the great
disaster of Waterloo. His voice was music itself to the Italian girl.
Brought up as a Corsican, Ginevra was, in some sense, a child of
Nature; falseness was a thing unknown to her; she gave herself up
without reserve to her impressions; she acknowledged them, or, rather,
allowed them to be seen without the affectations of petty and
calculating coquetry, characteristic of Parisian girlhood. During this
day she sat more than once with her palette in one hand, her brushes
in another, without touching a color. With her eyes fastened on the
officer, and her lips slightly apart, she listened, in the attitude of
painting a stroke which was never painted. She was not surprised to
see such softness in the eyes of the young man, for she felt that her
own were soft in spite of her will to keep them stern and calm. After
periods like this she painted diligently, without raising her head,