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Then came a new development. I had drawn you as Paris in dainty

armour, and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and polished

boar-spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms you had sat on the

prow of Adrian's barge, gazing across the green turbid Nile. You

had leaned over the still pool of some Greek woodland and seen in

the water's silent silver the marvel of your own face. And it had

all been what art should be-unconscious, ideal, and remote. One

day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I determined to paint a

wonderful portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume

of dead ages, but in your own dress and in your own time. Whether

it was the realism of the method, or the mere wonder of your own

personality, thus directly presented to me without mist or veil,

I cannot tell. But I know that as I worked at it, every flake and

film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. I grew afraid

that others would know of my idolatry.