‘And the original of this face?’ I heard my mother say in a voice that seemed agitated; ’could you tell me something about the original of this remarkable face?’ ‘The model?’ said Wilderspin.  ’We are not often asked about our models, but a model like that would endow mediocrity itself with genius, for, though apparently, and by way of beneficent illusion, the daughter of an earthly costermonger, she was a wanderer from another and a better world.  She is not more beautiful here than when I saw her first in the sunlight on that memorable day, at the corner of Essex Street, Strand, bare-headed, her shoulders shining like patches of polished ivory here and there through the rents in her tattered dress, while she stood gazing before her, murmuring a verse of Scripture, perfectly unconscious whether she was dressed in rags or velvet; her eyes—­’

’The eyes—­it is the eyes, don’t you know—­it is the eyes that are not quite right,’ said Sleaford.  ’Blue eyes with black eyelashes are awfully fine; you don’t see ’em in Egypt.  But I suppose that’s the type of something too.  Types always floor me, don’t you know?’

‘But the scene is no longer Egypt, my lord; it is Corinth,’ replied Wilderspin.

During this dialogue I stood motionless before the predella:  I could not stir; my feet seemed fixed in the floor by what can only be described as a wild passion of expectation.  As I stood there a marvellous change appeared to be coming over the veiled figure of the predella.  The veil seemed to be growing more and more filmy—­more and more like the ‘steam’ to which Sleaford had compared it, till at last it resolved itself into a veil of mist—­into the rainbow-tinted vapours of a gorgeous mountain sunrise—­and looking straight at me were two blue eyes sparkling with childish happiness and childish greeting, through flushed mists across a pool on Snowdon.

That she was found at last my heart knew, though my brain was dazed.  That in the next room, within a few yards of me, my mother and Sleaford and Wilderspin were looking at the picture of Winifred’s face unclouded by the veil, my heart knew as clearly as though my eyes were gazing at it, and yet I could not stir.  Yes, I knew that she was now neither a beggar in the street, nor a prisoner in one of the dens of London, nor starving in a squalid garret, but was safe under the sheltering protection of a good man.  I knew that I had only to pass between those folding-doors to see her in Wilderspin’s picture—­see her dressed in the ’azure-coloured tunic bordered with stars,’ and the upper garment of the ’colour of the moon at moonrise,’ which Wilderspin had so vividly described in Wales; and yet, paralysed by expectation, I could not stir.

III

Soon I was conscious that my mother, Sleaford, and Wilderspin were standing by my side, that Wilderspin’s hand was laid on my arm, and that I was pointing at the predella—­pointing and muttering,