For Oliver, inevitably, as Justin ought to have known he must, fell in love with Laura. They were always together. There is no doubt that even in winter his emotions were easy, and here was spring herself waking daily in Florence to wantoner life. He could not help feeling poetical when the sun and the bees, and now and then a butterfly, strayed in at the open doors of the galleries and the churches and the monasteries where he and Justin attended to the education of untravelled Laura—Justin olympically, Oliver with a growing conviction that she could, if she chose, have taught them both. She was diffident—Oliver wondered why—but she could be surprised into illuminating criticism, especially when Justin was out of earshot, and Oliver, in this spring mood of his and as impressionable as only the sea or an artist can be, was quickly aware that she was good for him. Justin’s tendency was to classify, to lock doors, to enclose; but she must be ever querying, opening, opening up avenues. She scattered questions like corn while they were garnering their conclusions, and Oliver was amazed to find how constantly those questions took root in him, sprouted into new thoughts, fresh, sturdy, blossom-bearing. In short, she stimulated him: set his fingers itching for his brushes. He always worked better when he had a woman in his head. He planned a picture of her. He was an impetuous person, and he discovered in her profile and her fine meek lips a resemblance to some perfectly amazing portrait of some absolutely superb woman by that man who knocked every other Florentine into a cocked hat—what’s his name?—Ghirlandaio. He was quite sure it was Ghirlandaio: remembered the picture: remembered its exact position on the left-hand wall of——Lord! didn’t Justin remember? They spent a questing week scouring Florence for the Ghirlandaio before Oliver remembered that it wasn’t a Ghirlandaio at all, but a Botticelli (it was a Botticelli year for Oliver) and that it wasn’t in Florence either, but in London. “A background, my dear chap! a background—divine! My word, what a blue! Like Shelley’s blue dome! Like Bellini’s doge—the background, not the doge, you chump! Never seen it? My God, and you live an hour from London!” And then he had raked down Brogi’s for a copy and brought it to them in triumph. “I told you so! There you are! No, they’d only got a postcard. But if you imagine the colour” (followed the blue doge), “it’s the image. I’ve simply got to paint her. My word, what a blind bat you are!” But Justin sat and enjoyed him non-committally, as you see a sleepy tom enjoying the permitted onslaughts of a terrier pup. “Can’t you see it?” Oliver worried at him. He could not be contented by acquiescence. He wanted enthusiasm. “The twin—the absolute twin! It only wants a slight wave in her hair”—(Laura glanced sidelong at Justin) “to be a photograph!” Justin, goaded into interest, stretched out a hand for the photograph, examined and returned it.