My dear,\' said the Colonel, as Gwen and he sat at breakfast together a few mornings later, \'now, what\'s your programme for to-day? An off day, I hope, for, to tell you the truth, I\'m beginning to get rather tired of so much sight-seeing. Yesterday, San Clemente, wasn\'t it? (that place with the very extraordinary frescoes!) and the Forum, and the temple of Fortuna something-or-other, where an extortionate fellow wanted to charge me a lira for showing us nothing; Wednesday, St. Peter\'s, which, thank goodness, we did thoroughly\' and won\'t have to go to again in the course of our lifetimes; Tuesday—I\'m sure I can\'t recollect what we did on Tuesday, but I know it was somewhere very tiring. I do hope today\'s to be an off day, Gwen. Have you made any arrangements?\'

\'Oh yes, papa. Don\'t you remember? That delightful Mr. Audouin is coming to take us round to some of the studios.\'

The colonel pushed his chair away from the table somewhat testily. \'The Yankee man, you mean, I suppose?\' he said, with a considerable trace of acerbity in his manner. \'That fellow who kept talking so much the other day about some German of the name of Heine (I find out from Mrs. Wilmer, by the way, that this man Heine was far from being a respectable person). So you\'ve promised to go mooning about the studios with him, have you?\'

\'Yes, papa, and he\'ll be here at ten; so please now go at once and get ready.\'

The colonel grumbled a little—it was his double privilege, as a Briton and a military man, to grumble as much as he thought necessary, on all possible occasions; but by the time Audouin arrived, he was quite ready, with his silk hat brushed up to the Bond Street pattern, and his eminently respectable kid gloves shaming Audouin\'s bare hands with their exquisite newness.

\'How kind of you to take us, Mr. Audouin,\' Gwen said, with one of her artless smiles: \'I\'m really so delighted to get a chance of seeing something of the inner life of artists. And you\'re going to introduce us to Maragliano, too! What an honour!\'

\'Oh, quite so,\' the colonel assented readily; \'most gratifying, certainly. A very remarkable painter, Signor Maragliano!\'

\'But most remarkable of all as a sculptor,\' Audouin put in quickly, before Gwen had time to correct her father\'s well-meant blunder. \'A magnificent figure, his Psyche. This way, Miss Russell, down the Corso.\'

\'Our name is Howard-Russell, Mr. Audouin, if you please—two surnames, with a dash between them,\' the colonel interrupted (one can hardly expect the military mind to discriminate accurately between a dash and a hyphen). \'My ancestor, the fourth earl, who was a Howard, you know, married a Lady Mary Russell, daughter of the fifth Marquis of Marsh wood—a great heiress—and took her name. That was how the Russell connection first got into the Howard family.\'

\'Indeed!\' Audouin answered, with forced politeness. (The best bred Americans find it hard to understand our genealogical interest.) \'But the double name\'s a little long, isn\'t it, for practical purposes? In an easy-going old-world country like Europe, people can find time for so many syllables, I dare say; but I\'m afraid we hurry-scurrying Americans would kick against having to give one person two surnames every time we spoke to him, colonel.\'

The colonel drew himself up rather stiffly. That any man could make light of so serious a subject as the Howard-Russell name and pedigree was an idea that had hardly before even occurred to his exalted consideration.

They walked along the Corso, and through the narrow street till they arrived at the Via Colonna. Then Audouin dived down that abode of artists, with Gwen chatting away to him gaily, and the colonel stalking beside them in solemn silence, till they reached Maragliano\'s studio.

As they entered, the great sculptor was standing aside behind a big lump of moist clay, where Colin Churchill was trying to set up a life-size model from the Calabrian Peasant. Colin\'s back was turned towards the visitors, so that he did not see them enter; and the colonel, who merely observed a young man unknown kneading up some sticky material on a board, \'just the same as if he were a baker,\' didn\'t for the moment recognise their late companion in the French railway carriage. But Gwen saw at once that it was Colin Churchill. Indeed, to say the truth, she expected to meet him there, for she had already heard all about his arrangement with Maragliano from Audouin; and she had cleverly angled to get Audouin to offer to take them both to Maragliano\'s, not without the ulterior object of starting a fresh acquaintance, under better auspices, with the interesting young English sculptor.

\'Ah, yes,\' Maragliano said to the colonel as soon as the formalities of introduction were over. \'That, signor, is my Calabrian Peasant, and that young man you see there, trying to model it, has really a most extraordinary plastic genius. He\'s a new pupil, and he\'s going to do wonders. But first, if you will wait and see, in ten minutes his Calabrian Peasant will come all to pieces.\'

\'Dear me!\' exclaimed the colonel, with much show of polite interest. \'Come all to pieces! Really! How very extraordinary! And what is the object of that, now, signor?\'

Maragliano laughed. \'He doesn\'t know it\'ll fall yet,\' he answered, half whispering. \'He\'s quite new to this sort of work, you see, and I told him when he came the other day to begin copying the Peasant. Of course, as your knowledge of the physical laws will immediately suggest to you, signor, the arm can\'t possibly hold together in moist clay in that position. In fact, before long, the whole thing will collapse altogether.\'

\'Naturally,\' the colonel answered, looking very wise, and glancing with a critical eye towards the marble original. \'That\'s a work, of course, that couldn\'t possibly be produced in clay, but only in bronze or marble.\'

\'But why did you set him to do it, then?\' asked Gwen, a little doubtfully. \'Surely it wasn\'t kind to make him begin it if it can only end by getting broken.\'

\'Ah, signorina,\' the great sculptor answered, shrugging his shoulders, \'we learn most of all by our errors. For a model like that, we always employ an iron framework, on which, as on a skeleton, we build up the clay into flesh and muscles. But this young compatriot of yours, though he has great native genius, is still quite ignorant of the technical ways of professional sculptors. He has evidently modelled hitherto only in his own self-taught fashion, with moist clay alone, letting it support its own weight the best way possible. So he has set to work trying to mould an outline of my Peasant, as he has been used to do with his own stiff upright figures. By-and-by it will tumble down; then we will send for a blacksmith; he will fix up a mechanical skeleton with iron bars and interlacing crosses of wood and wire; on that, my pupil will flesh out the figure with moist clay; and then it\'ll be as firm as a rock for him to work upon.\'

\'But it seems a great shame, all the same,\' Gwen cried warmly, \'to make him do it all for nothing. It looks to me like a waste of time.\'

\'Not so,\' Maragliano answered. \'He will get on all the faster for it in the end. He\'s too enthusiastic now. He must learn that art goes softly.\'

The colonel turned aside with Maragliano to examine some of the other works in the studio, but Gwen and Audouin went up to watch the new pupil at his futile task. Colin turned round as they approached, and felt his face grow hot as he suddenly recognised his late beautiful fellow-traveller. But Gwen advanced to meet him so frankly, and held out her delicate hand with such an air of perfect cordiality, that he half forgot the awkwardness of the situation, and only said with a smile, \'You see my hands are not in a fit state for welcoming visitors, Miss Howard-Russell; a sculptor must be excused, you know, for having muddy fingers. But I\'m so glad to see you again. I learnt from my brother how kindly you had interested yourself on my behalf with Sir Henry Wilberforce. It was very good of you, and I shall not forget the trouble you took for me.\'

Gwen coloured a little. Now that she looked back upon it in a calmer moment, her interference in Colin Churchill\'s favour had certainly been most dreadfully unconventional.

\'I\'m only too glad, Mr. Churchill,\' she said, \'that you\'ve got away at last from that horrid old man. He almost frightened me out of my senses. You ought to be here working, as you\'re doing now, of course, and I shall watch your progress in future with so much interest. Signor Maragliano has such a high opinion of you. He says you\'ll do wonders.\'

\'Yes,\' Colin answered, eagerly. \'He\'s a splendid man, Maragliano. It\'s grand to hear his generous appreciation of others, down even to the merest beginners. Whenever he talks of any other sculptor, dead or living, there\'s such a noble absence of any jealousy or petty reserve about his approbation. He seems as if he could never say enough in praise of anybody.\' \'He looks it,\' Audouin put in. \'He has a fine head and a speaking eye. I\'ve seldom seen a grander bust and profile. Don\'t you think so, Miss Russell?\'

\'Very fine indeed,\' Gwen answered. \'And so you\'re working at this Calabrian Peasant, Mr. Churchill. It\'s a beautiful piece of sculpture.\'

\'Oh, yes,\' Colin said, standing still and regarding it for a moment with loving attention. \'It\'s beautiful, beautiful. When I can model a figure like that, I shall think I\'ve done something really. But it\'s quite painful to me to look round and see the other men here—some of them younger than myself—to watch their power and experience, their masterly way of sketching in the figure, their admirable imitation of nature—and then to think how very little I myself have yet accomplished. It almost makes one feel despondent for one\'s own powers. When I watch them, I feel humbled and unhappy.\'

\'No, no,\' Audouin said warmly. \'You needn\'t think so, I\'m sure, Churchill. The man who distrusts his own work is always the truest workman. It\'s only fools or poor creatures who are satisfied with their own first tentative efforts. The true artist underrates himself, especially at first, and thereby both proves himself and makes himself the true artist.\'

\'Just what I felt myself,\' Gwen murmured, half inaudibly (though somebody standing in the shade behind heard her quite distinctly), only I don\'t know how to put it nearly so cleverly.\'

\'And Maragliano tells me,\' Audouin went on, \'that you\'ve got some splendid designs for bas-reliefs with you, which were what really det............