“Generally in the opposite direction,” Orsino observed in a tone of elderly unbelief.

Gouache had just put his brush into his mouth and held it between his teeth as a poodle carries a stick, while he used his thumb on the canvas.  The modern painter paints with everything, not excepting his fingers.  He glanced at his model and then at his work, and got his effect before he answered.

“You are very hard upon marriage,” he said quietly.  “Have you tried it?”

“Not yet.  I will wait as long as possible, before I do.  It is not every one who has your luck.”

“There was something more than luck in my marriage.  We loved each other, it is true, but there were difficulties—­you have no idea what difficulties there were.  But Faustina was brave and I caught a little courage from her.  Do you know that when the Serristori barracks were blown up she ran out alone to find me merely because she thought I might have been killed?  I found her in the ruins, praying for me.  It was sublime.”

“I have heard that.  She was very brave—­”

“And I a poor Zonave—­and a poorer painter.  Are there such women nowadays?  Bah!  I have not known them.  We used to meet at churches and exchange two words while her maid was gone to get her a chair.  Oh, the good old time!  And then the separations—­the taking of Rome, when the old Princess carried all the family off to England and stayed there while we were fighting for poor France—­and the coming back and the months of waiting, and the notes dropped from her window at midnight and the great quarrel with her family when we took advantage of the new law.  And then the marriage itself—­what a scandal in Rome!  But for the Princess, your mother, I do not know what we should have done.  She brought Faustina to the church and drove us to the station in her own carriage—­in the face of society.  They say that Ascanio Bellegra hung about the door of the church while we were being married, but he had not the courage to come in, for fear of his mother.  We went to Naples and lived on salad and love—­and we had very little else for a year or two.  I was not much known, then, except in Rome, and Roman society refused to have its portrait painted by the adventurer who had run away with a daughter of Casa Montevarchi.  Perhaps, if we had been rich, we should have hated each other by this time.  But we had to live for each other in those days, for every one was against us.  I painted, and she kept house—­that English blood is always practical in a desert.  And it was a desert.  The cooking—­it would have made a billiard ball’s hair stand on end with astonishment.  She made the salad, and then evolved the roast from the inner consciousness.  I painted a chaudfroid on an old plate.  It was well done—­the transparent quality of the jelly and the delicate ortolans imprisoned within, imploring dissection.  Well, must I tell you?  We threw it away.  It was martyrdom.  Saint Anthony’s position was enviable compared with ours.  Beside us that good man would have seemed but a humbug.  Yet we lived through it all.  I repeat it.  We lived, and we were happy.  It is amazing, how a man may love his wife.”