be pleased?..."

He first prepared everything painters need of brushes, colors, and cloths; then he built, in the courtyard of the studio, a little fountain whose waters fall upon special globes of glass, producing a soft, light, continuous music.

Around that fountain he planted all the flowers Mona Lisa loves, among them the white lily and the violet; then he called a special company of musicians to play, upon the violin and the guitar, a special piece that she adores and he adores, to serve as the "melody"; and he adorned the atmosphere of that melody with a picked company of musicians, singers, storytellers, and poets, so that he might study, in the face of his Mona Lisa, the changes of beauty in the different states of appreciation: from stories to poetry to music...

He prepared all that, and did not forget food for his friend, the little dog of the studio, and he waited for Mona Lisa. She was late; he grew anxious, and his anxiety mounted; and at last... the little dog barked, and Leonardo felt that she had come.

The lady-in-waiting appeared at the door of the studio, followed by a woman of thirty, wearing a black dress and a black veil, walking with the steps of the gods: this is Mona Lisa, wife of Francesco del Giocondo, Leonardo's friend.

He began the picture, and the first year passed, Mona Lisa and Leonardo in the rapture of that deep artistic atmosphere — both in one and the same rapture — he painting, and she feeding the little dog with her soft, enchanting hands, and the lady-in-waiting forever in the corner of the studio, reading the Gospel.

And the second year passed, and the picture was not yet finished. And although Francesco had every confidence in his wife and in his friend Leonardo, this delay disturbed him... And it was not the mere delay that disturbed him: there was something more important, which is that there appeared in the picture meanings he had not known in his wife — meanings that made him see in the picture more truth than he saw in his wife. It seemed to him that his wife shared certain secrets with the painter — and what secrets could they be! They are not secrets of love; or rather, they are not secrets in the familiar sense of that word.

Francesco had once heard Leonardo say: "Every artist inclines to endow the portraits of others with some of his own meanings. That is because what he produces is, before all else, a part of his own soul, which he creates and then makes known." He thought long upon that sentence, and came to see, day after day, that the portrait of his wife resembled Leonardo; then this grew upon him, until he came to see his wife herself resembling Leonardo... And he came to see that the smile he had observed on his wife's face and could not interpret — that smile which had taken an eternal place in his eyes — is the very smile he sees on all the faces in Leonardo's pictures. So that mysterious smile became a new enchantment for the husband, as it became the enchantment of the ages, and it made him feel that his wife was not of humankind — that she was loftier than humankind.

And the third year passed, and Leonardo was still seizing the moments of sullen weather, most careful that Mona Lisa should always be as she had been in the first hour of painting: in the same rapture, the same serenity, the same listening.

She came once, and sat on her chair listening to the music as was her custom, the little dog near her and the lady-in-waiting in the corner reading the Gospel. She waited for Leonardo to begin work, but he remained before her, contemplating her — an hour, two hours, three hours — and she calm, as if she understood the reason for the delay. At last he said: Madonna! What is the matter with you today? She answered: I was anxious about my daughter (her husband's daughter) all night; if you wish, let us leave the painting today. He answered her: No, we shall not waste the fruits of the clouds. Then he drew her on in a conversation that brought her back to her first state, and returned to painting.

And before the picture was finished, Leonardo felt that Mona Lisa had become something necessary to his life. He tried to enter into the depths of his own soul to see whether that was love, and he found that, though he sometimes felt in her the living beauty of woman, he felt it in others more violently, and for longer spells; so it was not love, then.

He felt that she was above humankind. What pleased him in her was that, with all the innate wisdom that had been granted her, she never once boasted of knowledge; she spoke with the simplicity of children, yet through that simplicity he perceived that her spirit was near to his spirit, and he came to feel that she was his eternal friend.

But then he would say again: Suppose I did love her — is there in that heavenly fabric of love anything that could touch her or touch me? Am I to await a fruit of love greater and loftier than that picture whose parents we have been?

All this, and the picture not yet finished. And it was as though Mona Lisa — that woman mysterious even to herself, and even to Leonardo — sensed what was within him, and pressed him to finish the picture. Leonardo answered her that he wished it, but that he still found in her, every day, new meanings. She understood then that the picture would never be finished; and she bade him farewell, and went away.

And he too felt that the picture would never be finished.

• It has appeared that artificial milk does not benefit the child's health; and the American child-welfare homes have been able to keep mother's milk for a long period in refrigerators without spoilage setting in.