"Of course you will," she answered cheerily, "and I shall have to confess that yours is better than mine. I am quite willing to yield the palm to you." "I must alter the expression of the mouth," he replied. "That is the part which has worried me. I don’t think I told you that I have had a commission to copy Rembrandt’s old Jew. I must set to work on that next week." "But you have given me your palette and brushes!" she laughed. "You must be generous enough to lend them to me," he said, smiling. "By the way, I intend to give you my books, all of them. Some day I must show them to you; I especially value my philosophical books, they have been my faithful companions through many years. I believe you do not read Greek. That is a pity, because you would surely enjoy Aristotle. I think I must teach you Greek; it would be an agreeable legacy to leave you when I pass away into the Great Silence." "I should like to learn," she said, wondering to hear him speak so unreservedly. It seemed as if some great barrier had been rolled aside, and as if she were getting to know him better, having been allowed to glance into his past life, to sympathize with his past mistakes, and with the failure of his ambitions, and with the deadening of his heart. "You must read Æschylus," he continued enthusiastically, "and if I mistake not, the ’Agamemnon’ will mark an epoch in your life. You will find that all these studies will serve to ennoble your art, and you will be able to put mind into your work, and not merely form and color. Do you know, I feel so well that I believe I shall not only live to finish Andrea del Sarto, but also to smoke another pipe?" "You have been too rash to-day," she laughed, "giving away your pipe and pouch, your palette and brushes in this reckless manner! I must get you a new pipe to-morrow. I wonder you did not part with your venerable Lucretius." "That reminds me," he said, fumbling in his pocket, "I think I have dropped my Lucretius. I fancy I left it somewhere in the Poet’s Corner. It would grieve me to lose that book." "Let me go and look for it," she said, and she advanced a few steps and then came back to him.