cold stream through his veins, as if he were being thrown into sympathy with his imaged self.
“You are beginning to look like it already,” said Piero, with a short laugh, moving the picture away again. “He’s seeing a ghost—that fine young man. I shall finish it some day, when I’ve settled what sort of ghost is the most terrible—whether it should look solid, like a dead man come to life, or half transparent, like a mist.”
Tito, rather ashamed of himself for a sudden sensitiveness strangely opposed to his usual easy self-command, said carelessly—
“That is a subject after your own heart, Messer Piero—a revel interrupted by a ghost. You seem to love the blending of the terrible with the gay. I suppose that is the reason your shelves are so well furnished with death’s-heads, while you are painting those roguish Loves who are running away with the armour of Mars. I begin to think you are a Cynic philosopher in the pleasant disguise of a cunning painter.”