Accuracy was not the phrase for them; a Chinese copy is accurate.

Hilda's had that evanescent and ethereal life--that flitting fragrance, as it were, of the originals--which it is as difficult to catch and retain as it would be for a sculptor to get the very movement and varying color of a living man into his marble bust.

Only by watching the efforts of the most skilful copyists--men who spend a lifetime, as some of them do, in multiplying copies of a single picture--and observing how invariably they leave out just the indefinable charm that involves the last, inestimable value, can we understand the difficulties of the task which they undertake.
It was not Hilda's general practice to attempt reproducing the whole of a great picture, but to select some high, noble, and delicate portion of it, in which the spirit and essence of the picture culminated: the Virgin's celestial sorrow, for example, or a hovering angel, imbued with immortal light, or a saint with the glow of heaven in his dying face,--and these would be rendered with her whole soul.

If a picture had darkened into an indistinct shadow through time and neglect, or had been injured by cleaning, or retouched by some profane hand, she seemed to possess the faculty of seeing it in its pristine glory.

The copy would come from her hands with what the beholder felt must be the light which the old master had left upon the original in bestowing his final and most ethereal touch.