"I like the Guido Renis, Cheiron," she said; "his Magdalen in the Reale Palazzo is exquisite--she is pure and good. But I do not like the saints and martyrs in the throes of their agony, they say nothing to me, I have no sympathy for them. I adore the Madonna and the Child; they touch me--here," and she laid her hand upon her heart. "The Sassoferarto Virgin in the Reale Palazzo is like Miss Lutworth, she is full of kindness and youth. The early masters' works, which are badly drawn and beautifully colored, I have to take apart--and it is unsatisfying. Because, while I am trying not to see the wrong shape, I have only half my faculties to appreciate the exquisite colors, and so a third influence has to come in--the meaning of the artist who painted them and perhaps put into them his soul. But that is altruistic--I could as well admire something of very bad art for the same reason. For me a picture should satisfy each of these points of view to be perfect and lift me into heights. That is why perhaps I shall prefer sculpture on the whole, when I shall have seen it, to painting." And Mr. Carlyon felt that, learned in art and old as he was, Halcyone might give him a new point of view. Next day they left for Pisa. CHAPTER XXVIII When Arabella Clinker and her mother were settled together at Wendover, a strange peace seemed to fall upon the place. John Derringham was conscious of it upstairs as he lay in his Louis XV bed. By the time he was allowed to be carried to a sofa in the sitting-room which had been arranged for him, July had well set in. He had parted from his Cecilia with suitable things said upon either side. Even in his misery and abasement, John Derringham was too assured a spirit and too much a man of the world to have any hesitation or awkwardness. Mrs. Cricklander had been all that was sympathetic. She looked superbly full of vigor and the joy of life as she came to say farewell. "John, darling," she purred, "you will do everything you are told to by the doctors while I am away, won't you?" and she caressed his forehead with her soft hand. "So that I may not have to worry as dreadfully as I have been doing, when I come back. It has made me quite ill--that is why I must go to Carlsbad. You will be good now; so that I may find you as strong and handsome as ever on my return." Then she bent and kissed him. He promised faithfully, and she never saw the whimsical gleam in his eyes, because for the moment having gained her end her faculties had resumed their normal condition, which was not one of superlative sensitiveness. Like everything else in her utilitarian equipment, fine perceptions were only assumed when the magnitude of the goal in view demanded their presence. And even then they merely went as far as sentinels to warn or encourage her in the progress of her aims, never wasting themselves upon irrelevant objects.