he gave us glimpses of this same face. He showed this woman's
mysterious smile in the Madonna, in Saint Anne, Mary Magdalen, and
the outlines of the features are suggested in the Christ and the
Saint John of the "Last Supper." But not until La Gioconda had posed
for him did the consummate beauty and mysterious intellect of this
ideal countenance find expression.

There is in the face all you can read into it, and nothing more. It
gives you what you bring, and nothing else. It is as silent as the
lips of Memnon, as voiceless as the Sphinx. It suggests to you every
joy that you have ever felt, every sorrow you have ever known, every
triumph you have ever experienced.

This woman is beautiful, just as all life is beautiful when we are
in health. She has no quarrel with the world--she loves and she is
loved again. No vain longing fills her heart, no feverish unrest
disturbs her dreams, for her no crouching fear haunts the passing
hours--that ineffable smile which plays around her mouth says
plainly that life is good. And yet the circles about the eyes and
the drooping lids hint of world-weariness, and speak the message of
Koheleth and say, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

La Gioconda is infinitely wise, for she has lived. That supreme
poise is only possible to one who knows. All the experiences and
emotions of manifold existence have etched and molded that form and
face until the body has become the perfect instrument of the soul.

Like every piece of intense personality, this picture has power both
to repel and to attract. To this woman nothing is either necessarily
good or bad. She has known strange woodland loves in far-off eons