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came to the
wonderful Silenus tending the infant Bacchus.
    "Have you ever been to Florence, Madame Brooks?" Sir
Anthony inquired as we stood before the affecting pair.
    "Oh no," I said, with a pang. That unknown city was
laden with private significance for me. My grandmother had once lived there,
for what I suspected was one of the few truly happy intervals in her life;
Frederick had studied there; and in the early days of our marriage we had often
promised each other that one day we would visit it together.
    Frederick.
    I seized upon his name as a defense against the amazing flood of
sheer animal hunger that had swept through me only minutes earlier.
    "My husband studied in Florence," I told Sir Anthony,
"and we often planned to visit it together. He wanted so much to show me
Michelangelo's David."
    "Oh yes, the David is perfection itself," agreed
Sir Anthony. "But if you ever go to Florence, be sure not to overlook his Bacchus, which is in the Bargello. I like it better than the David, even if
it is not so impressive a work."
    "And why are you so fond of it?" I asked with a little
smile, for it amused me to think that while my drunken husband had favored the
alert and utterly sober David, the sober Sir Anthony would harbor a preference
for the god of intoxication.
    "The Bacchus himself is exquisite, but the little
satyr at the god's feet is utterly enchanting," explained Sir Anthony.
"When you come upon those eyes from a certain angle, it seems like a
living thing. The first time I saw it, it brought me up short. I felt as if I'd
stumbled upon something from another world."
    As he went on to describe, in his low voice, the effect of that
seductive, pagan gaze, I wondered what wayward string in his reserved English
soul had vibrated to it so strongly.
    "How you surprise me!" I told him artlessly, as we moved
on. Regrettably, I had never mastered the art of proper English conversation,
which dictates that, unless one is with intimate friends, one must rigidly
confine oneself to the most impersonal subjects. However, I had already gone
too far to turn back, so I plunged on. "I would have taken you for a
worshiper of Apollo, not of Bacchus!"
    "And you'd have been right, I suppose," said Sir Anthony
with a rueful laugh. "Certainly Apollo is far more admirable. He never
spoke a false word, you know. But Bacchus was always gentle, even in anger,
while Apollo, as you must recall, could be very cruel."
    "Cruel?" I said. "Apollo, the healer?"
    "He slew Niobe's children," Sir Anthony reminded me.
    I felt my face close up.
    "Yes," I murmured. "He was very cruel."
    Thereafter, for a time, every image I saw evoked thoughts of
destruction and loss and drew my mind relentlessly back to the sorrows I had
come here to forget. They seemed to chastise me for the frivolous spirit in
which I had undertaken the day's adventure.
    But once we had moved into the Salle de Psyche, the frivolity of
my nature began to reassert itself—with some help from Sir Anthony.
    We spent a long time admiring the Venus de Milo.
    "The perfect woman," I remarked as I studied the serene
loveliness of her features.
    "Not quite perfect," said Sir Anthony dryly.
    I glanced up at him.
    "You don't regard her as the ne plus ultra of feminine
beauty?"
    His eyes lingered on me with the same unrevealing expression I had
seen in them at our first meeting.
    "No," was all he said.
    But later, just before we left, we agreed that we must pay our
respects to the Nik è of Samotbrace, and Sir Anthony admired her
so extravagantly that at last I felt compelled to observe, "So that is
your belle id é ale! A woman with wings!"
    He gave this comment a moment or two of earnest consideration
before he rejected it cautiously.
    "Nooo," he said. "Not quite."
    But then his mouth began to twitch.
    "I prefer women with hands," he announced, and then added, after
a tiny pause, "and lips."
    There was nothing insinuating in the matter-of-fact way he said
this. His tone was not at all suggestive. It