“His Majesty is not indulgent; but come here and look yourself.  I will not speak of the child, though it....  In God’s name, let us leave it as it is.  The picture impresses me as it did the king, and the Madonna—­ I grieve to say it, she belongs anywhere rather than in Heaven.  How often this subject is painted!  If Meister Antonio, if Moor should see this....”

“Then, then?” asked Ulrich, his eyes glowing with a gloomy fire.

“He would compel you to begin at the beginning once more.  I am sincerely sorry for you, and not less so for poor Belita.  My wife will triumph!  You know I have always upheld your cause; but this luckless work...”

“Enough!” interrupted the youth.  Rushing to the picture, he thrust his maul-stick through it, then kicked easel and painting to the floor.

Coello, shaking his head, watched him, and tried to soothe him with kindly words, but Ulrich paid no heed, exclaiming: 

“It is all over with art, all over.  A Dios, Master!  Your daughter does not care for love without art, and art and I have nothing more to do with each other.”

At the door he paused, strove to regain his self-control, and at last held out his hand to Coello, who was gazing sorrowfully after him.

The artist gladly extended his, and Ulrich, pressing it warmly, murmured in an agitated, trembling voice: 

“Forgive this raving....It is only....I only feel, as if I was bearing all that had been dear to me to the grave.  Thanks, Master, thanks for many kindnesses.  I am, I have—­my heart—­my brain, everything is confused.  I only know that you, that Isabella, have been kind to me. and I, I have—­it will kill me yet!  Good fortune gone!  Art gone!  A Dios, treacherous world!  A Dios, divine art!”

As he uttered the last sentence he drew his hand from the artist’s grasp, rushed back into the studio, and with streaming eyes pressed his lips to the palette, the handle of the brush, and his ruined picture; then he dashed past Coello into the street.

The artist longed to go to his child; but the king detained him in the park.  At last he was permitted to return to the Alcazar.

Isabella was waiting on the steps, before the door of their apartments.  She had stood there a long, long time.

“Father!” she called.

Coello looked up sadly and gave an answer in the negative by compassionately waving his hand.

The young girl shivered, as if a chill breeze had struck her, and when the artist stood beside her, she gazed enquiringly at him with her dark eyes, which looked larger than ever in the pallid, emaciated face, and said in a low, firm tone: 

“I want to speak to him.  You will take me to the picture.  I must see it.”

“He has thrust his maul-stick through it.  Believe me, child, you would have condemned it yourself.”

“And yet, yet!  I must see it,” she answered earnestly, “see it with these eyes.  I feel, I know—­he is an artist.  Wait, I’ll get my mantilla.”