“Exactly so; and therefore, while for distant landscapes, motionless, and already softened by atmosphere, the daguerreotype is invaluable (I shall do nothing else this summer but work at it), yet for taking portraits, in any true sense, it will be always useless, not only for the reason I just gave, but for another one which the pre-Raphaelites have forgotten.”

“Because all the features cannot be in focus at once?”

“Oh no, I am not speaking of that.  Art, for aught I know, may overcome that; for it is a mere defect in the instrument.  What I mean is this:  it tries to represent as still what never yet was still for the thousandth part of a second:  that is, the human face; and as seen by a spectator who is perfectly still, which no man ever yet was.  My dear fellow, don’t you see that what some painters call idealising a portrait is, if it be wisely done, really painting for you the face which you see, and know, and love; her ever-shifting features, with expression varying more rapidly than the gleam of the diamond on her finger; features which you, in your turn, are looking at with ever-shifting eyes; while, perhaps, if it is a face which you love and have lingered over, a dozen other expressions equally belonging to it are hanging in your memory, and blending themselves with the actual picture on your retina:—­till every little angle is somewhat rounded, every little wrinkle somewhat softened, every little shade somewhat blended with the surrounding light, so that the sum total of what you see, and are intended by Heaven to see, is something far softer, lovelier—­younger, perhaps, thank Heaven—­than it would look if your head was screwed down in a vice, to look with one eye at her head screwed down in a vice also:—­though even that, thanks to the muscles of the eye, would not produce the required ugliness; and the only possible method of fulfilling the pre-Raphaelite ideal would be, to set a petrified Cyclops to paint his petrified brother.”

“You are spiteful.”

“Not at all.  I am standing up for art, and for nature too.  For instance:  Sabina has wrinkles.  She says, too, that she has grey hairs coming.  The former I won’t see, and therefore don’t.  The latter I can’t see, because I am not looking for them.”

“Nor I either,” said Stangrave smiling.  “I assure you the announcement is new to me.”

“Of course.  Who can see wrinkles in the light of those eyes, that smile, that complexion?”

“Certainly,” said Stangrave, “if I asked for her portrait, as I shall do some day, and the artist sat down and painted the said ’wastes of time,’ on pretence of their being there, I should consider it an impertinence on his part.  What business has he to spy out what nature has taken such charming trouble to conceal?”

“Again,” said Claude, “such a face as Cordifiamma’s.  When it is at rest, in deep thought, there are lines in it which utterly puzzle one—­touches which are Eastern, Kabyle, almost Quadroon.”