Mueller looked at me gravely, and filled his glass again.

“I think I know the lady,” said he.

“Indeed?”

“Yes—­by your description.  You forgot to add, however, that she is gray.”

“To be sure—­as a badger.”

“To say nothing of a club foot, an impediment in her speech, a voice like a raven’s, and a hump like a dromedary’s!  Ah! my dear friend, what an amazingly comic fellow you are!”

And the student burst again into a peal of laughter so hearty and infectious that I could not have helped joining in it to save my life.

“And now,” said he, when we had laughed ourselves out of breath, “now to the object of my visit.  Do you remember asking me, months ago, to make you a copy of an old portrait that you had taken a fancy to in some tumble-down chateau near Montlhery!”

“To be sure; and I have intended, over and over again, to remind you of it.  Did you ever take the trouble to go over there and look at it?”

“Look at it, indeed!  I should rather think so—­and here is the proof.  What does your connoisseurship say to it?”

Say to it!  Good heavens! what could I say, what could I do, but flush up all suddenly with pleasure, and stare at it without power at first to utter a single word?

For it was like her—­so like that it might have been her very portrait.  The features were cast in the same mould—­the brow, perhaps, was a little less lofty—­the smile a little less cold; but the eyes, the beautiful, lustrous, soul-lighted eyes were the same—­the very same!

If she were to wear an old-fashioned dress, and deck her fair neck and arms with pearls, and put powder on her hair, and stand just so, with her hand upon one of the old stone urns in the garden of that deserted chateau, she would seem to be standing for the portrait.

Well might I feel, when I first saw her, that the beauty of her face was not wholly unfamiliar to me!  Well might I fancy I had seen her in some dream of long ago!

So this was the secret of it—­and this picture was mine.  Mine to hang before my desk when I was at work—­mine to place at my bed’s foot, where I might see it on first waking—­mine to worship and adore, to weave fancies and build hopes upon, and “burn out the day in idle phantasies” of passionate devotion!

“Well,” said Mueller impatiently, “what do you think of it?”

I looked up, like one dreaming.

“Think of it!” I repeated.

“Yes—­do you think it like?”

“So like that it might be her por ...  I mean that it might be the original.”

“Oh, that’s satisfactory.  I was afraid you were disappointed.”

“I was only silent from surprise and pleasure.”

“Well, however faithful the copy maybe, you know, in these things one always misses the tone of age.”

“I would not have it look a day older!” I exclaimed, never lifting my eyes from the canvas.