‘Most beautiful!’ my mother ejaculated, as we three lingered before the predella.  ‘Do look at the filmy texture of the veil.’

‘Looks more like steam than a white veil, don’t you know?’ said Sleaford.

‘Like steam, my lord?’ exclaimed Wilderspin from the next room.  ’The painter of that veil had peculiar privileges.  As a child he had been in the habit of watching a face through the curtain of steam around a blacksmith’s forge when hot iron is plunged into the water-trench, and the face, my lord, though begrimed by earthly toil, was an angel’s.  No wonder, then, that the painting in that veil is unique in art.  The flesh-tints that are pearly and yet rosy seem, as you observe, to be breaking through it, and yet you cannot say what is the actual expression on the face.  But now come and see the picture itself.’

My mother and Sleaford lingered for a moment longer, and then passed between the folding-doors.

But I did not follow them; I could not.  For now there was something in the predella before me which fascinated me, I scarcely knew why.  It was the figure of the queen—­the figure between the two sleeping angels—­the figure behind the veil, and expressed by the veil—­that enthralled me.

There was a turn about the outlined neck and head that riveted my gaze; and, as I looked from these to the veil falling over the face, a vision seemed to be rapidly growing before my eyes—­a vision that stopped my breath—­a vision of a face struggling to express itself through that snowy film—­whose face?

* * * * *

‘In the crypt my senses had a kind of license to play me tricks,’ I murmured; ‘but now and here my reason shall conquer.’

And I stood and gazed at the veil.  During all the time I could hear every word of the talk between Wilderspin, Sleaford, and my mother before the picture in the other room.

‘Awfully fine picture,’ said Sleaford, ’but the Queen there—­Isis:  more like a European face than an Egyptian.  I’ve been to Egypt a good deal, don’t you know?’

’This is not an historical painting, my lord.  As Philip Aylwin says, “the only soul-satisfying function of art is to give what Zoroaster calls ‘apparent pictures of unapparent realities.’” Perfect beauty has no nationality; hers has none.  All the perfections of woman culminate in her.  How can she then be disfigured by paltry characteristics of this or that race or nation?  In looking at that group, my lord, nationality is forgotten, and should be forgotten.  She is the type of Ideal Beauty whose veil can never be raised save by the two angels of all true art, Faith and Love.  She is the type of Nature, too, whose secret, as Philip Aylwin says, “no science but that of Faith and Love can read."’

’Seems to be the type of a good deal; but it’s all right, don’t you know?  Awfully fine picture!  Awfully fine woman!’ said Sleaford in a conciliatory tone.  ’She’s a good deal fairer, though, than any Eastern women I’ve seen; but then I suppose she has worn a veil al her life up to now.  Most of ’em take sly peeps, and let in the hot Oriental sun, and that tans ’em, don’t you know?’