Poor woman! Though I had my grudge, and no taste or reason to commiserate such vanity, I suffered some qualms of remorse for the part I was led to play. It is natural, after all, for the sex to see itself never so immortal as through the eyes of love; and, when a man has once praised its complexion, to claim for itself an eternity of roses. Father Pope, the old spiritual curmudgeon, never quite credited, I think, the genuineness of this late conversion. I daresay, from his experience in the confessional box, he knew his man pretty well, and the value of such emotional abjurations. The sick devil turned monk was not to his taste; and, if he ventured to intimate as much, the coldness which certainly befell between madam and him at this time was easily to be accounted for. It all amused me hugely; and I felt delightfully wicked while the fun lasted. But retribution, my friend, was to overtake your naughty little Diana. One day, stealing into the studio, I found Gogo alone, grinding colours into a little mortar. “God ye good e’en, little serpent,” said he. “You can sit and beguile me for practice till my master comes.” “Gogo,” I said, shocked. “Why do you call me by such a name?” “Because you are as like Eve as two peas,” growled he. “Eve was not a serpent, but a beautiful woman,” I answered, pouting. “And so was Lamia; and yet she was a serpent,” he grunted. “I don’t know what you mean. You said Eve.” “Well, why not?” he replied, turning his red, morose-looking eyes on me. “Eve accused the serpent of beguilement, didn’t she? and Adam Eve? But Eve was made out of the man, therefore Adam accused himself. But Eve accused the serpent; therefore Adam accused the serpent. Yet he accused Eve; therefore Eve was the serpent, which is what she would, and will, never understand. O, God bless her! God bless her! Which, if He would do, blessing the serpent, might unriddle this sinful problem of life!” He set to pounding vigorously with his pestle, and for a minute I watched him in a bewildered silence. There was always something in this shorn Cyclops which oddly attracted me. “Gogo,” I said quite softly. He threw down his pestle at once, and faced round, writhing his hands together, and glaring at me. “Who spoke?” he said, in hoarse, trembling tones. “A voice from the garden making me in love with my own clown name. O, always so, always so, thou spirit of Eve; and, though it lost the world to God, I’d take the apple from thy hand.” I laughed a little tremulously, as he stumped across the floor and stood close before me. The vision of this great storm of a creature, condemned to play the “comic relief” in the tragedy of his own manhood, came as near my heart as anything.