"I see," said Mr. Pelly. "Your original was twenty when you were painted. And you naturally remained twenty." He felt rather prosaic and dry, and to soften matters added, "Tell me of your first painting, and what is earliest in your recollection." "Then you will not interrupt me?" Mr. Pelly gave a promise the voice seemed to wait for, and then it continued, and, as it seemed to the listener, told the tale that follows, which is printed as continuous. The only omissions are a few interruptions of Mr. Pelly's, which, so far as they were inquiries or points he had not understood, are made up for by very slight variations in the text, which he himself has sanctioned, as useful and explanatory. Whether he was awake or dreaming, he never rightly knew. But his extraordinary memory--he is quite a celebrity on this score--enabled him to write the whole down in the course of the next day or two, noting his own interruptions, now omitted. The most rational way of accounting for the occurrence undoubtedly is that the old gentleman had a very vivid dream, suggested by his having read several pages--this he admits--of the manuscript translation, in which a too ready credulity has detected a sequel to the story itself. None knows better than the student of alleged supernatural phenomena how frequent is this confusion of cause and effect. CHAPTER III The Picture's tale. It was so well painted--that was why it could hear four hundred years ago. How its painter hungered and thirsted for its original, and _vice versa_. How old January hid in a spy-hole, to watch May, and saw it all. Of Pope Innocent's penetration. Of certain bells, unwelcome ones. How two _innamorati_ tried to part without a kiss, and failed. Nevertheless assassins stopped it when it had only just begun. But Giacinto got at January's throat. How the picture was framed, and hung where May could only see it by twisting. Of the dungeon below her, where Giacinto might be. How January dug at May with a walking-staff. How the picture was in abeyance, but loved a firefly; then was interred in furniture, and three centuries slipped by. How it sold for six fifty, and was sent to London, to a picture-restorer, which is how it comes into the tale. How Mr. Pelly woke up. You ask me to tell you what is earliest in my recollection. I will do so, and will also endeavour to narrate as much as I can remember of the life of the lady I was painted from; whose memory, were she now living, would be identical with my own. The very first image I can recall is that of my artist, at work. He is the first human being I ever saw, as well as the first visible object I can call to mind. He is at work--as I am guided to understand by what I have learned since--upon my right eye. It is a very dim image indeed at the outset, but as he works it becomes clearer, and at last I see him quite plainly.