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"What's your Master going to think of this, Amadeo?" she asked

I removed my arms and looked to find her voice She dressed behind her painted paneled screen, a gift froiven her by one of her favorite French poets She appeared quickly, clothed as splendidly as before in a dress of pale spring green, earden of delight with these tiny yellow and pink blooms so carefullytaffeta skirts

"Well, tellto say when he finds out his little lover is a veritable god of the wood?"

"Lover?" I was astonished

She was very gentle in her an to comb out her tousled hair She wore no paint and her face was unlorious hood of rippling gold Her forehead was sh

"Botticelli made you," I whispered I often said this to her, because she was so like his beauties Indeed everyone thought so, and they would bring

her ss from time to time

I thought on it, I thought on Venice and this world in which I lived I thought on her, a courtesan, receiving those chaste yet lascivious paintings as if she were a saint

Soo, when I knelt in the presence of old and burnished beauty, and thought myself at the pinnacle, that I must take up my brush and I must paint only "what represented the world of God "

There was no tu of currents, as I watched her braid her hair again, stringing the fine ropes of pearls in with it, and the pale green ribbons, the ribbons themselves seith the saown Her breasts were blushing, half-covered beneath the press of her bodice I wanted to rip it open again

"Pretty Bianca, what makes you say this, that I'm his lover?"

"Everyone knows it," she whispered "You are his favorite Do you think you've ry?"

"Oh, if only I could," I said I sat up "You don't knowmakes his, to knohat men can know "

She smiled and nodded "So you came and hid under the bed "

"I was sad "