Four Phases of Love

g a sunny twilight around him. He saw the boy by his bedside, and the doctor, and heard that Theodore had g

r bright little eyes at him, squeaked, and flourished about, without his casting a glance towards them. The boy, not knowing that they were permitted guests, frightened them away. Some one knocked. It was somebody who brought the artist an order for a pa

he old servant opened the door. "They waited long for you last night," he said. "I was sent to your lodgings, but you had not re

e him; she seemed to have paused suddenly in the middle of the room on her way to the door; she tried to speak; her cheeks flushed. He seized her hand eagerly with

ason for it," she said. "Something prevented you; it was very fo

reatingly. "You have

bad night, and the mus

k one turn up and down the room, and stood before her; he grasped her hand again, stammered out a word,

when she had had a little recovered the

treat his loved one to be silent on what had just passed between them, he felt incapable of talking calmly over it, or of meeting any one but herself in his blissful intoxication. It had already passed her lips. The mother, a stately, ceremonious woman, clasped him heartily in her arms; formal as she usua

e removed her arm, and sat near him without touching him. He felt pained; he felt, too, when after some hours he was obliged to leave, and kissed her again with his whole heart on the threshold, that she avoided him shily, and at first turned away her lips from his. He departed with a strange confusion of feeling--a weight upon his heart--an

im as he entered--taller and more manly than he had appeared to him the evening before. Theodore went to him and said, "You have rallied, Bianchi, and the d

t, and thrown his cloak over one shoulder, his head sprang freely from the broad chest--the short curled hair was a little disordered--his forehead massive and noble; and thus, with an absent look, and his arm

out yoursel

ould yo

et submissive and compliant, struck Theodore's delicate ear. H

f you are in no humour to talk, make a sign with your h

hand, which then withdrew

the present you must resign yourself to my intrusiveness; for you must know that I have made up my

men, with a woman's patience, whose stout arms are ashamed of him when they encounter a piece of marble. Well, perhap

enough within a circle of two inches for a soul

sibly, but hardly

id Theodore. "But are you obliged to

et look around the four

there in the square, eating my artichoke by the fountain at noon, and sleeping at night at the foot of my work. But one i

rking in marble without any discomfo

n started u

e from head to foot, because I had run out of my studio without thinking of taking off my old working-jacket. I thought, 'Let them stare;' took courage, and stepped with a bow and my work before his eminence. I saw at once that he was in a bad temper, and that his neighbour had already tasted some of its effects. I told him shortly why I was there, and begged to be permitted to show my sketch. The old fellow nodded, after his custom, cast a glance over the figures, which looked doubly noble amongst all those rogues, and said, 'Not bad. But 'twont do, 'twont do; wants noblesse, my son, and more direct reference to the holy church. Take it home and beat it up. The clay is wet still.' I stood like a man in a madhouse. Beat it up! as if my loftiest ideas were broth. Whilst I stood there, unable to utter a word, up stepped the monsignori, stuck their learned spectacles on their noses, and abused it before and behind till they did not leave a nail's breadth without a spot of blame, just as when the old wolf half kills a sheep, and then hands it over to her whelps to worry and whet

ct did not deceive you when you felt an antipathy to my being near you. For I am here in Rome for the purpose of poking about old parchments, and digging out long-bur

d Bianchi, quickly, and half aside. "Yo

lf have a secret terror of it. It has a power of glaring at feeble souls, that tu

Med

n her away there in the corner and left her, half begun

he beautiful woman's face fascinated me. Afterwards I saw the circular one in the villa Ludovisi, and never rested until I had made a copy of it as well as I could at ho

the story to you, as tol

n do you return?" he a

ou are not well enough yet. I will not listen. I know what you

by the hearth. Bianchi slept, and the boy whispered that he had made him buy the wine and borrow the c