Fraser's magazine - v. 24 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A Diptych. By The Author Of ' Consolations.' Thank luve that list you to his merci call.—Jamet I. of Scotland. ' A ND who is this new artist with a spea... more »king brush ? ' said Sir Alfred XX Osborne, as I was showing him after dinner the last additions to my modest gallery ; ' and what nut is he giving us to crack—is it a new version of the Choice of Hercules, or a modern riddle of Sacred and Profane Love ?' I said, with feigned unconcern,' The diptych ? Oh! that was my wife's last birthday present; I hope you like it, for the fact is I want to persuade you to do the artist's portrait for me.' (Indeed, I had asked him to dinner with that sole purpose in my machiavellian mind.) The courtly President of the Royal Academy bowed towards the lady of the house and turned his assent into a prayer for his fellow artist's gracious leave. When the portrait was exhibited, I heard one painter call to another,' Look at this woman with the everlasting eyes.' People who want to flatter me call my wife a feminine Watts, and she has certainly never painted anything better than this diptych : two single figures of fair women in a plain black frame. In the First Panel. We had spent six weeks in the same country house and were engaged to be married. I felt very much in love, thought Edith the sweetest girl in the world, and myself the happiest of men. You remember one of three successive summers—not this year or last— famous for continuous months of hot sunshine ? The six weeks were cloudless, and to this day I recall them as a period of unclouded brightness. I had never even fancied myself in love before, and it seemed as if an undiscovered world was all at once revealed in the moment when my love quivered on the verge of passion at the first parting after, we thought, our hearts had me...« less