The figure might have been some beautiful youth of ancient fable,--Hylas or Narcissus, Paris or Endymion.

Its beauty was the beauty of natural movement; nothing had been sought to be represented but the perfection of an attitude.

This had been most attentively studied, and it was exquisitely rendered.
Rowland demanded more light, dropped his head on this side and that, uttered vague exclamations.

He said to himself, as he had said more than once in the Louvre and the Vatican, "We ugly mortals, what beautiful creatures we are!" Nothing, in a long time, had given him so much pleasure.

"Hudson--Hudson," he asked again; "who is Hudson ?" "A young man of this place," said Cecilia.
"A young man?
How old ?" "I suppose he is three or four and twenty." "Of this place, you say--of Northampton, Massachusetts ?" "He lives here, but he comes from Virginia." "Is he a sculptor by profession ?" "He 's a law-student." Rowland burst out laughing.