“The one that’s painted _there_,” answered Malcolm, “does look as if he might know that the least a goddess may claim of a worshipper is, that he should come into her presence pure enough to understand her purity. I came upon a fine phrase the other evening in your English prayer-book. I never looked into it before, but I found one lying on a book-stall, and it happened to open at the marriage service. There, amongst other good things, the bridegroom says: ‘With my body I thee worship.’--‘That’s grand,’ I said to myself. ‘That’s as it should be. The man whose body does not worship the woman he weds, should marry a harlot.’ God bless Mr William Shakspere!--_he_ knew that. I remember Mr Graham telling me once, before I had read the play, that the critics condemn _Measure for Measure_ as failing in poetic justice. I know little about the critics, and care less, for a man who has to earn his bread and feed his soul as well, has enough to do with the books themselves without what people say about them; and Mr Graham would not tell me whether he thought the critics right or wrong; he wanted me to judge for myself. But when I came to read the play, I found, to my mind, a most absolute and splendid justice in it. They think, I suppose, that my lord Angelo should have been put to death. It just reveals the low breed of them; they think death the worst thing, therefore the greatest punishment. But Angelo prays for death, that it may hide him from his shame: it is too good for him, and he shall _not_ have it. He must live to remove the shame from Mariana. And then see how Lucio is served!” While Malcolm talked, Lenorme went on painting diligently, listening and saying nothing. When he had thus ended, a pause of some duration followed. “A goddess has a right to claim that one thing--has she not, Mr Lenorme?” said Malcolm at length, winding up a silent train of thought aloud. “What thing?” asked Lenorme, still without lifting his head. “Purity in the arms a man holds out to her,” answered Malcolm. “Certainly,” replied Lenorme, with a sort of mechanical absoluteness. “And according to your picture, every woman whom a man loves is a goddess--_the_ goddess of nature?” “Certainly;--but what _are_ you driving at? I can’t paint for you. There you stand,” he went on, half angrily, “as if you were Socrates himself, driving some poor Athenian buck into the corner of his deserts! _I_ don’t deserve any such insinuations, I would have you know.”