CHAPTER XLV.
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N the grey river-clay that she brought for Este with arduous toil from the bed of the Ombrone river, he had made in the twilight of his sombre and solitary workroom a full-sized statue of her. He had a facile talent, and here, where it was his only solace, his sole pursuit, he had achieved a certain greatness of conception; and freedom and grace were both in the work of his hand.
When she came in that day, he stopped her with a gesture.
'Ah, how like you are to my image of you,' he said, with an artist's pleasure in his own creation.
In his statue he had made her with nude feet and arms, fresh come from the
