172 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
" Then I have dreamed it," said Philip.
" It reminds me of a girl I once knew years ago," she said.
lt I did not wish to show it you : I felt it was a libel on you."
" It is beautiful," she replied, now looking at him, and with a sad expression in her eyes.
" It shall be, if you give me the opportunity to study the original."
" I suppose you have in your mind a story for your pic- ture. It is called Tragedy, your mother tells me."
Philip wished that his mother had not said so much to the countess ; but he only replied that it was the subject for the Academy gold medal.
" And in your mind the tragedy is the situation of that young man who is to die in the arms of the woman in mine, eh, Mr. Forsyth ? I am to be the poor creature who extends her arms with all her good kind suffering heart in her pale face to the poor dying student is that so? "
" And the general group ; the old man is an incident of the tragedy. The spirit of the subject also lies not alone in the fact pourtrayed, but the idea of the road to Siberia."
" Yes, yes do not be afraid to say all you may think or feel of that, the most enormous of all tragedies it is true ; but there is worse than Siberia there are perils worse than the road to it and the arrival. Perhaps in your picture the young man is her lover; ah, my friend, to have been his companion in exile would have been bliss to that young girl whom the face recalls to me; her love was so great Siberia would have been heaven with him. Do you ever think of all the horrors of the Inferno of Dante ? They are as nothing compared with the fate of that young girl whom I knew in a Russian village long ago. But, my dear Philip, why ask me, who am rich and happy and of the noblesse, to sit for this poor mad creature ? "
