We glanced at Gigi, who, for the second time that afternoon, was sinning. Gigi had not retired to his customary labors behind the burlap curtain, but was standing near us, carving at a bit of plaster medallion, ostensibly turning it this way and that to get a better light on it, but in reality feasting his Latin eyes on Miss Chittenden’s beauty. And then Gigi, usually a silent soul, did a strange thing. He began to talk, very eagerly. “The hand of the Signorina’s mother is truly beautiful.” (The Signorina giggled, and then was shocked by her own levity. She told me afterward that she couldn’t help laughing; she had felt as if Gigi were pouring out a page from a foreign-language grammar all over her.) “In marble,” continued Gigi, “the marble that grows in my part of the world, how very fine it would be! I myself could well begin it, and the Signor could finish it. You have seen the art of the Signor! Many sculptors cannot do what the Signor can. It is the _morbidezza_! The others do not attain it.” Miss Chittenden flashed upon Gigi a smile more dazzling than any she had yet given to me. “Now as I understand it,” she cried, “he could rough out your design and do the heavy work on it, and then you could take the marble and finish it up, and give it the more—what-do-you-call-it?” We all three laughed aloud at that, and while I was trying to explain to the girl, as tactfully as possible, that after she had been abroad and seen the works of art in many countries, she might not care for a marble hand on a book, even with lace at the wrist, and with knitting-needles sticking out of the book, Gigi returned to his den, from which one then heard the sound of hard labor. I was finding it rather difficult to convince Miss Chittenden that she was asking for what was obsolete, from the world’s point of view, and impossible, from mine. I tried to dissuade her by telling her that it would be only a fragment. With astounding quickness she replied, “Oh, but that wouldn’t matter, would it? Lots of those old part-gods in the Museum are only fragments, and yet the teachers in the Art Department are always praising them up, just the same!”