2 THE OPEN A IK. 



re-ally Guido, but those who loved him had called him 

 so in order to try and express their hearts about him. 

 For they thought if a great painter could be a little 

 boy, then he would be something like this one. They 

 were not very learned in the history of painters : they 

 had heard of Baphael, but Kaphael was too elevated, 

 too much of the sky, and of Titian, but Titian was 

 fond of feminine loveliness, and in the end somebody 

 said Guido was a dreamy name, as if it belonged to 

 one who was full of faith. Those golden curls shaking 

 about his head as he ran and filling the air with 

 radiance round his brow, looked like a Nimbus or 

 circlet of glory. So they called him St. Guido, and 

 a very, very wild saint he was. 



St. Guido stopped in the cornfield, and looked all 

 round. There were the fir-trees behind him a thick 

 wall of green hedges on the right and the left, and 

 the wheat sloped down towards an ash-copse in the 

 hollow. No one was in the field, only the fir-trees, 

 the green hedges, the yellow wheat, and the sun over- 

 head. Guido kept quite still, because he expected 

 that in a minute the magic would begin, and some- 

 thing would speak to him. His cheeks which had 

 been flushed with running grew less hot, but I cannot 

 tell you the exact colour they were, for his skin was 

 BO white and clear, it would not tan under the sun, 

 yet being always out of doors it had taken the faintest 

 tint of golden brown mixed with rosiness. His blue 

 eyes which had been wide open, as they always were 

 when full of mischief, became softer, and his long 

 eyelashes drooped over them. But as the magic did 

 not begin, Guido walked on slowly into the wheat, 



