He gave it to me himself, but I'm afraid to mention his name, lest you
never should have heard of him, critic and historian as you are.
I know the world goes fast and one generation forgets another.
He was all the fashion when I was young."
She was perhaps amazed at my assurance, but I was surprised at hers; at her
having the energy, in her state of health and at her time of life, to wish
to sport with me that way simply for her private entertainment--the humor
to test me and practice on me. This, at least, was the interpretation that I
put upon her production of the portrait, for I could not believe that she
really desired to sell it or cared for any information I might give her.
What she wished was to dangle it before my eyes and put a prohibitive
price on it. "The face comes back to me, it torments me," I said,
turning the object this way and that and looking at it very critically.
It was a careful but not a supreme work of art, larger than the
ordinary miniature and representing a young man with a remarkably
handsome face, in a high-collared green coat and a buff waistcoat.
I judged the picture to have a valuable quality of resemblance and to have
been painted when the model was about twenty-five years old. There are,
as all the world knows, three other portraits of the poet in existence,
but none of them is of so early a date as this elegant production.
"I have never seen the original but I have seen other likenesses," I went on.
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