“‘I know, I know,’ he said. And then a great light came to me. I saw that it wouldn’t be necessary for me, then or at any other time, to debate passionately with myself whether or not I should speak to him of what I had learned. The largeness of his grief sheltered all my anxieties. His arm around my shoulder, we stood together looking down upon the face of a much loved and deeply wronged woman. In life, it had been a face to delight in; a face with loyal blue eyes under upraised dark lashes, a delicate straight nose, and lips vividly curved like the petals of a rose. In death, with the eyes forever shadowed, the flower-like coloring effaced, its beauty of form was enhanced. But more than this, a spiritual significance, not previously apprehended by us, shone through the pale clay. We both of us felt it. Janvier did well to have such loveliness preserved. “That was the only mould I have ever made from a human face. Giuseppe made two casts, one for Janvier, one for me. Janvier’s was destroyed in that fire you’ve heard about.” “And is your copy still in existence?” Half involuntarily, Gerald took up the cast called Forgiveness. “Yes,” replied the elder man, “it is in your hands now.” The other laid his lips reverently on the smooth brow of the face which had reminded the German of the Nuremberg Virgin; the face which the Frenchman had thought French, the Italian girl Italian, and the American boy American. “That cast, which you say is now called Forgiveness, has been enshrined in this room, behind the corner tapestry there, for more than a generation. It is older than you are. After Janvier died, I told myself it was not right to hide so much beauty from the world. But it wasn’t until after the Armistice that I mustered up courage to have three plaster copies made. And it was only last week that I sent a copy to each of our three largest art schools.” “And you gave the casts the name, Forgiveness?” “Ah, no, I left them nameless! But I must tell you a strange thing about that, too. At the time when I made the mould, we young artists were very much under the spell of Omar Khayyám’s fuzzy, fezzy philosophy; yes, quite entangled in the obscurantist beauty of the Vine! Fitzgerald’s verses and our own Vedder’s drawings were a cult with us. _I_ couldn’t forgive as greatly as Janvier did. My wrong was less, and my pardoning power was less. And whenever I thought of the whole dreadful business, one of the Fitzgerald quatrains would ring in my ears; the one that ends “‘For all the sin with which the face of man Is blackened, Man’s forgiveness give—and take!’