of yours.  He would not have agreed with Gloriani any more than you.  He used to come and see me very often, and in those days I thought his tunic and his long neck infallible symptoms of genius.  His talk was all of gilded aureoles and beatific visions; he lived on weak wine and biscuits, and wore a lock of Saint Somebody’s hair in a little bag round his neck.  If he was not a Beato Angelico, it was not his own fault.  I hope with all my heart that Mr. Hudson will do the fine things he talks about, but he must bear in mind the history of dear Mr. Schafgans as a warning against high-flown pretensions.  One fine day this poor young man fell in love with a Roman model, though she had never sat to him, I believe, for she was a buxom, bold-faced, high-colored creature, and he painted none but pale, sickly women.  He offered to marry her, and she looked at him from head to foot, gave a shrug, and consented.  But he was ashamed to set up his menage in Rome.  They went to Naples, and there, a couple of years afterwards, I saw him.  The poor fellow was ruined.  His wife used to beat him, and he had taken to drinking.  He wore a ragged black coat, and he had a blotchy, red face.  Madame had turned washerwoman and used to make him go and fetch the dirty linen.  His talent had gone heaven knows where!  He was getting his living by painting views of Vesuvius in eruption on the little boxes they sell at Sorrento.”

“Moral:  don’t fall in love with a buxom Roman model,” said Roderick.  “I ’m much obliged to you for your story, but I don’t mean to fall in love with any one.”

Gloriani had possessed himself of the photograph again, and was looking at it curiously.  “It ’s a happy bit of youth,” he said.  “But you can’t keep it up—­you can’t keep it up!”

The two sculptors pursued their discussion after dinner, in the drawing-room.  Rowland left them to have it out in a corner, where Roderick’s Eve stood over them in the shaded lamplight, in vague white beauty, like the guardian angel of the young idealist.  Singleton was listening to Madame Grandoni, and Rowland took his place on the sofa, near Miss Blanchard.  They had a good deal of familiar, desultory talk.  Every now and then Madame Grandoni looked round at them.  Miss Blanchard at last asked Rowland certain questions about Roderick:  who he was, where he came from, whether it was true, as she had heard, that Rowland had discovered him and brought him out at his own expense.  Rowland answered her questions; to the last he gave a vague affirmative.  Finally, after a pause, looking at him, “You ’re very generous,” Miss Blanchard said.  The declaration was made with a certain richness of tone, but it brought to Rowland’s sense neither delight nor confusion.  He had heard the words before; he suddenly remembered the grave sincerity with which Miss Garland had uttered them as he strolled with her in the woods the day of Roderick’s picnic.  They had pleased him then; now he asked Miss Blanchard whether she would have some tea.