One could see an angle of the old garden and the fragment of an antique building, with a church steeple beyond.

It was on a background of azure, of verdure and of ruins, in a horizon larger and more distant, but composed of the same elements, that was to arise the face of the young girl, designed after the manner, so sharp and so modelled, of the 'Pier della Francesca', with whom Maitland had been preoccupied for six months.
All great composers, of an originality more composite than genitive, have these infatuations.
Maitland was at his easel, dressed with that correct elegance which is the almost certain mark of Anglo-Saxon artists.

With his little varnished shoes, his fine black socks, spotted with red, his coat of quilted silk, his light cravat and the purity of his linen, he had the air of a gentleman who applied himself to an amateur effort, and not of the patient and laborious worker he really was.

But his canvases and his studies, hung on all sides, among tapestries, arms and trinkets, bespoke patient labor.

It was the history of an energy bent upon the acquisition of a personality constantly fleeting.