"I have told you: make a sacrifice on the altar of art."
"What on earth do you mean?" I cried, tugging at my bonds.
"That picture," replied the artist, pausing in his occupation to point with his dagger at the canvas on the easel; "that picture is at a standstill for want of an appropriate model. _I have found my model_."
With parted lips and dilated eyes I gazed at the speaker, wondering whether he were in earnest. His easy air of unconcern inspired me with false hopes. He was only acting the part of a would-be assassin, I thought. It was a jest of his to frighten me. A trick to compel me perhaps to forswear all claim to Daphne.
"Do you hope to frighten me by these tricks?" I cried, assuming a courage I did not feel. "I have but to raise my voice----"
There was a look in his eyes, a motion of the dagger that convinced me I had better not.
"You are wise. Your silence has added a few moments to your brief span of life."
If there had been a tremor in his voice, if his features had relaxed from their set expression, I could have hoped then that his humanity might yet triumph over the impulse of crime. But this cold, mechanical calmness--it was even a more frightful thing than the deed he was contemplating.
"Would you murder me for the sake of a picture?" I asked in as quiet a tone as I could assume.
"Killing in the interests of art is not murder, any more than the burning of a heretic in the interests of holy religion is murder."
It was evident that the Italian was in deadly earnest, and that his whole soul was absorbed by one passion--devotion to his art. In the interests of that fetish, crime even was excusable. This is the age of realism--of a realism that too often dispenses with morality. Angelo's æsthetics of death was but the logical outcome of the realistic school.
The artist had imparted the necessary edge to his weapon, and reclined once more in an easy attitude, fingering the blade with a delicate touch, and surveying my form with a critical eye.
"I cannot say that you are quite the _beau-ideal_ for an artist. A little more massiveness in your figure, a little more muscular development of the limbs, would be more in accordance with the canons of physical beauty. Still, these little imperfections can be rectified on the canvas."