How he will execute it is another question, and depends on other things; but no better sketch could be given of the sudden spiritual fashion in which great pictures are generated.

Here are the lines, and they also strike the keynote of Andrea's soul--that to which his life has brought him.
You smile?
why, there's my picture ready made, There's what we painters call our harmony! A common greyness silvers everything,-- All in a twilight, you and I alike--, You at the point of your first pride in me (That's gone, you know),--but I, at every point; My youth, my hope, my art, being all toned down To yonder sober pleasant Fiesole.
There's the bell clinking from the chapel-top; That length of convent-wall across the way Holds the trees safer, huddled more inside; The last monk leaves the garden; days decrease, And autumn grows, autumn in everything.
Eh?
the whole seems to fall into a shape As if I saw alike my work and self And all that I was born to be and do, A twilight piece.

Love, we are in God's hand.
In God's hand?
Yes, but why being free are we so fettered?
And here slips in the unbidden guest of the theory.

Andrea has chosen earthly love; Lucrezia is all in all; and he has reached absolute perfection in drawing-- I do what many dream of, all their lives.
He can reach out beyond himself no more.

He has got the earth, lost the heaven.