“William!” cried Kitty, “do put that fool down and come here; one sees it splendidly!”

She was standing in one of the choir-stalls of San Giorgio Maggiore, somewhat raised above the point where Ashe had been studying his German hand-book.

“My dear, if this man doesn’t know, who does!” cried Ashe, flourishing his volume in front of him as he obeyed her.

“‘Dans le royaume des aveugles,’” said Kitty, contemptuously.  “As if any German could even begin to understand Tintoret!  But—­don’t talk!”

And clasping both hands round Ashe’s arm, she stood leaning heavily upon him, her whole soul gazing from the eyes she turned upon the picture, her lips quivering, as though, from some physical weakness, she could only just hold back the tears with which, indeed, the face was charged.

She and Ashe were looking at that “Last Supper” of Tintoret’s which hangs in the choir of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice.

It is a picture dear to all lovers of Tintoret, breathing in every line and group the passionate and mystical fancy of the master.

The scene passes, it will be remembered, in what seems to be the spacious guest-chamber of an inn.  The Lord and His disciples are gathered round the last sacred meal of the Old Covenant, the first of the New.  On the left, a long table stretches from the spectator into the depths of the picture; the disciples are ranged along one side of it; and on the other sits Judas, solitary and accursed.  The young Christ has risen; He holds the bread in His lifted hands and is about to give it to the beloved disciple, while Peter beyond, rising from his seat in his eagerness, presses forward to claim his own part in the Lord’s body.

The action of the Christ has in it a very ecstasy of giving; the bending form, indeed, is love itself, yearning and triumphant.  This is further expressed in the light which streams from the head of the Lord, playing upon the long line of faces, illuminating the vehement gesture of Peter, the adoring and radiant silence of St. John—­and striking even to the farthest corners of the room, upon a woman, a child, a playing dog.  Meanwhile, from the hanging lamps above the supper-party there glows another and more earthly light, mingled with fumes of smoke which darken the upper air.  But such is the power of the divine figure that from this very darkness breaks adoration.  The smoke-wreaths change under the gazer’s eye into hovering angels, who float round the head of the Saviour, and look down with awe upon the first Eucharist; while the lamp-light, interpenetrated by the glory which issues from the Lord, searches every face and fold and surface, displays the figures of the serving men and women in the background, shines on the household stuff, the vases and plates, the black and white of the marble floor, the beams of the old Venetian ceiling.  Everywhere the double ray, the two-fold magic!  Steeped in these “majesties