It was not only practice, industry, and intelligence, but more especially this inborn, well-nigh infallible instinct which warned him of the exact instant at which the corrosion had proceeded far enough to give such and such a value to the shadows as, in the artist's intention, the engraving required.

It was just this triumph of mind over matter, this power of infusing an aesthetic spirit into it, as it were, this mysterious correspondence between the throb of his pulses and the progressive gnawing of the acid that was his pride, his torment, and his joy.
In his dedication of these works to her, Elena felt herself deified by her lover as was Isotta di Rimini by the medals which Sigismondo Malatesta caused to be struck in her honour; and yet, on those days when Andrea was at work, she would become moody and taciturn, as if under the influence of some secret grief, or she would give way to such sudden bursts of tenderness, mingled with tears and half-suppressed sobs, that the young man was startled and, not understanding her, became suspicious.
One evening, they were returning on horseback from the Aventine down the Via di Santa Sabina, their eyes still filled with a vision of imperial palaces flaming under the setting sun that burned red through the cypresses and seemed to cover them with golden dust.

They rode in silence, for Elena seemed out of spirits, and her depression had communicated itself to her lover.

As they passed the church of Santa Sabina, Andrea reined up his horse.
'Do you remember ?' he said.
Some fowls, picking about peacefully in the grass, skurried away at the barking of Famulus.

The whole place was as quiet and unassuming as the purlieus of a village church, but the walls had that singular luminous glow which the buildings of Rome seem to give out at 'Titian's hour.' Elena drew up beside him.
'That day--how long ago it seems now!' she said with a little tremor in her voice.
In truth, the memory of it had already dropped away into the gulf of time as if their love had endured for years.