Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/89

 to unloose the sandals of the Angel of Urbino.

He worshipped Art and followed it with humble and perfect reverence.

If there were too great an austerity, too chill a calm, in his creations, as in Flandrin's, and Laurens', and Overbeck's, they were absolutely pure, entirely noble.

Under his touch now his Eros became too entirely the incarnation of spiritual love, his Psyche too entirely the embodiment of the soul; but the myth lost none of its grace and gained a holiness not its own under his treatment.

But, for the first time, his heart was not in the work of his hand. He had not his usual interest in his creations. He had his usual fine thought, delicate touch, subtle meaning in what grew beneath the sweep of his brush, but for ever between him and the fresco came the remembrance of the Musoncella and of Maremma.

As he drew the gold curls and fair face of his Psyche, he saw always the dark and brilliant face of that daughter of the Etruscan Mastarna. As he painted the Greek portico, the cool atrium, the dark green of orange and myrtle touching white