“You will find me eager to patronize our indigenous talent,” he said.  “I am putting up a little shanty in my native town, and I propose to make a rather nice thing of it.  It has been the will of Heaven to plunge me into mourning; but art has consolations!  In a tasteful home, surrounded by the memorials of my wanderings, I hope to take more cheerful views.  I ordered in Paris the complete appurtenances of a dining-room.  Do you think you could do something for my library?  It is to be filled with well-selected authors, and I think a pure white image in this style,”—­pointing to one of Roderick’s statues,—­“standing out against the morocco and gilt, would have a noble effect.  The subject I have already fixed upon.  I desire an allegorical representation of Culture.  Do you think, now,” asked Mr. Leavenworth, encouragingly, “you could rise to the conception?”

“A most interesting subject for a truly serious mind,” remarked Miss Blanchard.

Roderick looked at her a moment, and then—­“The simplest thing I could do,” he said, “would be to make a full-length portrait of Miss Blanchard.  I could give her a scroll in her hand, and that would do for the allegory.”

Miss Blanchard colored; the compliment might be ironical; and there was ever afterwards a reflection of her uncertainty in her opinion of Roderick’s genius.  Mr. Leavenworth responded that with all deference to Miss Blanchard’s beauty, he desired something colder, more monumental, more impersonal.  “If I were to be the happy possessor of a likeness of Miss Blanchard,” he added, “I should prefer to have it in no factitious disguise!”

Roderick consented to entertain the proposal, and while they were discussing it, Rowland had a little talk with the fair artist.  “Who is your friend?” he asked.

“A very worthy man.  The architect of his own fortune—­which is magnificent.  One of nature’s gentlemen!”

This was a trifle sententious, and Rowland turned to the bust of Miss Light.  Like every one else in Rome, by this time, Miss Blanchard had an opinion on the young girl’s beauty, and, in her own fashion, she expressed it epigrammatically.  “She looks half like a Madonna and half like a ballerina,” she said.

Mr. Leavenworth and Roderick came to an understanding, and the young sculptor good-naturedly promised to do his best to rise to his patron’s conception.  “His conception be hanged!” Roderick exclaimed, after he had departed.  “His conception is sitting on a globe with a pen in her ear and a photographic album in her hand.  I shall have to conceive, myself.  For the money, I ought to be able to!”