“What is it?” whispered the girl, catching an echo of his amazement.
“Great God!” he repeated in his own whisper of awe. “It’s a Titian!”
He saw before him the figure of a woman holding an apple. The apple was golden, but not more golden than the soft ivory glow of the woman’s body, bathed in its wash of purifying color. That body made Conkling’s mind flash back to the Borghese with its _Sacred and Profane Love_ and a moment later revert to the _Magdalen_ in the Pitti. There was the same divine fullness of throat and breast, the same wealth of red-gold hair, the unmistakable mellowness of color and melting loveliness of line. There was a largeness and power in the conception of the figure, a stubborn yet exalted animality, which convinced Conkling the canvas before him belonged to Titian’s later days. Yet as he studied it he objected to the word “animality.” He preferred to substitute the phrase “spiritualized paganism” as he deciphered subtler effects which made him think of the National Gallery _Magdalen_ and remember the abundant glow of bosom in the _Flora_ of the Uffizi, the machinery of human life made adorable to human eyes.
“It’s a Titian!” he repeated in a shocked and half incredulous whisper as he stepped still closer to the canvas.
That canvas, he could see, had suffered somewhat through the vicissitudes of its history. Extremes of heat and cold obviously had imposed a slight rimple of fine lines on its surface. But this did not greatly trouble Conkling. He even found in it, in fact, an accidental and subsidiary delight, for it added eloquence to its tone of time and enriched its note of history with an accentuation of age. But the miracle that it could have been carried unknown and unheralded across the Atlantic, that it could lie for years in the attic of a dilapidated Ontario manor-house, tended to take his breath away. He knew enough of Titian to remember that much of that great Venetian’s work had been lost. He had Vasari to back him up in that. More had been lost, in fact, than had survived, but behind the possession of that painting, he knew, lay a history which would not be easy to unravel. It impressed him as something which kings might have intrigued over. He recalled how nearly two centuries ago, when the _Flora_ was unearthed to Florence, a nation practically ceased warfare to come and stare at the canvas—and it would soon be America’s time to stop and stare.