contract was inserted a clause to the effect that Van Dyck should work on
each one of the pictures.

"Pray you," said Rubens, "to which Van Dyck do you refer? There are many
of the name in Antwerp."

The jealousy germ had begun to develop.

And about this time Van Dyck was busying himself as understudy, by making
love to Rubens' wife. Rubens was a score of years older than his pupil,
and Isabella was somewhere between the two--say ten years older than Van
Dyck, but that is nothing! These first fierce flames that burn in the
heart of youth are very apt to be for some fair dame much older than
himself. No psychologist has ever yet just fathomed the problem, and I am
sure it is too deep for me--I give it up. And yet the fact remains, for
how about Doctor Samuel Johnson--and did not our own Robert Louis fall
desperately in love with a woman sixteen years his senior? Aye, and
married her, too, first asking her husband's consent, and furtherance
also being supplied by the ex-husband giving the bride away at the altar.
At least, we have been told so.

Were this sketch a catalog, a dozen notable instances could be given in
which very young men have been struck hard by women old enough to have
nursed them as babes.

Van Dyck loved Isabella Rubens ardently. He grew restless, feverish, lost
appetite and sighed at her with lack-luster eye across the dinner-table.
Rubens knew of it all, and smiled a grim, sickly smile.

"I, too, love every woman who sits to me for a portrait. He'll get over