“I never wrote a line except to take notes. I was nearly thirty before it occurred to me to publish anything. Even then, it was only for a few pedants more or less like myself that I wrote. My writings are of no account. The only people I can imagine it pleasant to write for are quite young people. They might lend your work a sort of charm by reading their own youth and enthusiasm into it. But it is not easy to arouse enthusiasm by describing how Bernardino de’ Conti paints ears, or how Pontormo models hands. For one thing, nobody wants to know. All that it leads to is that presently you find yourself approaching the most innocent work of art with the mind of a detective, revelling in clues and the æsthetically unimportant. Nine-tenths of your enjoyment comes from the gratified sense of your own ingenuity. Of course it is wrong. When I was a boy I fell in love with one of Giotto’s frescoes in the Upper Church at Assisi, a thing half-peeled from the wall, and representing Saint Francis preaching to the birds. But why I liked it had nothing in the world to do either with Giotto or Saint Francis. I simply saw a bit of decoration, a Japanese print in gray and blue.... That is the proper spirit. One day, however, a year or so later, I was in the Louvre, in the Salle des Primitifs, and before me was a beautiful little picture which hangs on the side wall, near the door. Below it was printed an artist’s name, Gentile da Fabriano. I looked at the picture again, and I said to myself, ‘Why Gentile, when it is obviously by Jacopo Bellini?’ That was the beginning.” “You don’t think, then, it matters very much?” “About Gentile? Not in the least. I haven’t even persuaded them to make the alteration in the catalogue.” But I could see he was talking merely not to be silent, so I got up and we lit our candles. At the top of the staircase I said good-night, for our bedrooms were on opposite sides of the house, but he pushed open a door. “There is a picture here,” he said. I followed him into the big, dark room, black shadows that seemed almost solid gliding away before us. He took my candle and held both up so that their light flickered across a small canvas that hung just above the level of our eyes. The painting represented the head of a quite young girl, and I recognised it at once as a portrait of Katherine Dale. I am no judge of pictures, so I will only say that this picture gave me pleasure. Yet I should have hesitated to call the face beautiful, and it certainly was not pretty. It reminded me rather of an early Millais――that is to say, the subject reminded me of a Millais type. There was the same breadth of forehead, the same rich colouring and steadfast, serious eyes that were more like the eyes of a boy than of a girl. I wondered why he had brought me in to look at it just now, and thought it had perhaps been painted by a celebrated artist.