Take THAT, Accursed Painting!

While awaiting her husband's return, Lucrece wanders over to look at a painting.  Her meditations on it are almost cathartic, in a way; and while her thoughts and feelings continue to vacillate, she seems to accept (for the moment) that the fault is really Tarquin's.

She reacts strongly to the depiction of Hecuba, meditating on the suffering caused by Paris's self-indulgence.  (Oddly, she seems to blame Priam for failing to restrain his son.)

But she reacts even more strongly to the depiction of Sinon.  At first she is angry that the painter has shown him so fair of face; then, reflecting on Tarquin:

'It cannot be,' quoth she, 'that so much guile'--
She would have said 'can lurk in such a look;'
But Tarquin's shape came in her mind the while,
And from her tongue 'can lurk' from 'cannot' took:
'It cannot be' she in that sense forsook,
And turn'd it thus, 'It cannot be, I find,
But such a face should bear a wicked mind.

So she concludes that fair face must conceal evil intent!  And then, a few stanzas later:

Here, all enraged, such passion her assails,
That patience is quite beaten from her breast.
She tears the senseless Sinon with her nails,
Comparing him to that unhappy guest
Whose deed hath made herself herself detest