“Oh, I have none, when it is sincere.  But as soon as I had asked you, I felt afraid that I was troublesome.”

“If I had felt that, I should have expressed it unmistakably,” she replied, in a voice which reminded him of the road from Baiae to Naples.

“Thank you; that is what I should wish.”

Having found a carriage for her, and made an appointment for the morning, he watched her drive away.

A few hours later, he encountered Spence in the Piazza Colonna, and they went together into a caffe.  Spence had the news that Mrs. Lessingham and her niece would arrive on the third day from now.  Their stay would be of a fortnight at longest.

“I met Mrs. Baske at the Vatican this morning,” said Mallard presently, as he knocked the ash off his cigar.  “We had some talk.”

“On Vatican subjects?”

“Yes.  I find her views of art somewhat changed.  But sculpture still alarms her.”

“Still?  Do you suppose she will ever overcome that feeling?  Are you wholly free from it yourself?  Imagine yourself invited. to conduct a party of ladies through the marbles, and to direct their attention to the merits that strike you.”

“No doubt I should invent an excuse.  But it would be weakness.”

“A weakness inseparable from our civilization.  The nude in art. is an anachronism.”

“Pooh!  That is encouraging the vulgar prejudice.”

“No; it is merely stating a vulgar fact.  These collections of nude figures in marble have only an historical interest.  They are kept out of the way, in places which no one is obliged to visit.  Modern work of that kind is tolerated, nothing more.  What on earth is the good of an artistic production of which people in general are afraid to speak freely?  You take your stand before the Venus of the Capitol; you bid the attendant make it revolve slowly, and you begin a lecture to your wife, your sister, or your young cousin, on the glories of the masterpiece.  You point out in detail how admirably Praxiteles has exhibited every beauty of the female frame.  Other ladies are standing by you smile blandly, and include them in your audience.”

Mallard interrupted with a laugh.

“Well, why not?” continued the other.  “This isn’t the gabinetto at Naples, surely?”

“But you are well aware that, practically, it comes to the same thing.  How often is one half pained, half amused, at the behaviour of women in the Tribune at Florence!  They are in a false position; it is absurd to ridicule them for what your own sensations justify.  For my own part, I always leave my wife and Mrs. Baske to go about these galleries without my company.  If I can’t be honestly at my ease, I won’t make pretence of being so.”

“All this is true enough, but the prejudice is absurd.  We ought to despise it and struggle against it.”

“Despise it, many of us do, theoretically.  But to make practical demonstrations against it, is to oppose, as I said, all the civilization of our world.  Perhaps there will come a time once more when sculpture will be justified; at present the art doesn’t and can’t exist.  Its relics belong to museums—­in the English sense of the word.”