Teaser Tuesday #205

Ed ecco di nuovo la rubrica settimanale Teaser Tuesday, creata dal blog Should Be Reading, che si divide in poche, semplici fasi:
1_ prendi il libro che stai leggendo
2_ apri una pagina a caso
3_ scrivi un breve brano (stando attenti a non spoilerare)
4_ scrivi titolo e autore

So this, then, was the artist whose work I had been admiring. He bowed over my hand briefly, the straightened and allowed over his light eyes to flick back to my face. "You are very beautiful, Madonna Simonetta," he said. Yet the words were not delivered in the honeyed tones of compliments to which I had become accustomed in my brief sixteen years; rather, this artist Botticelli spoke as one simply stating a fact, as though he mus acknowledge what so many others had already aknowledged.
My answering smile was uncertain. "So I have been told, signore," I said. I found myself studying him - his face, his eyes, his hands, as though by doing so I could discover how he menaged to create such marvelous works. "It is a true pleasure to make your aquaintance. Signor Lorenzo was kind enough to share with me your two panels of the story of Judith. I was quite taken with them."
"Were you?" he said, sounding surprised. "I must thank you for saying so. Judith is a most worthy eroine, and so I could not only hope I might do her justice."
"You did that and more," I said. "You show her not only as a heroine, but as a real woman, too. I felt that I might step into the panel and begin to converse with her."
"Then I have achieved my aim." He paused as he continued to contemplate my face, yet not with the avaricious desider with which men usually studied it; nor with the envious, calculating gaze of most women. Rather, he considered my face as though he would unlock its secrets; as though he would solve the puzzle of how I was so beautiful.
 - The most beautiful woman in Florence, Alyssa Palombo