consent seemed to shiver—to shudder as though a polar breeze had swept over the tropic night—so tragic, so real, so ardent, this unspeakable, this unspoken confession."

"And what of Mons. Redan?" I questioned.[Pg 13]

[Pg 13]

"The Count that turned actor? He played the part of Rodrigue, and he told me afterwards that there were times when a sob would choke him as he listened."

"And Redan loved her?"

"Loved? Oh, pale, anæmic, wan-complexioned word to run in leash with Redan. He loved her so much that he was willing to barter name, possessions, career for the warmth of her lips."

"And she?"

"And she——" he said, suddenly disturbing his fire panorama with a dash of the poker. "Well, she took them."

There was silence for a moment or two as I turned the page—silence that was accentuated by the falling ash, which dropped white and weightless like the thousand lives that sink daily to dust exhausted with hope deferred. Then he eyed the vegetable mass that faced me.

"A camellia," he explained, "crushed and brown. It was plucked from the dead breast of a woman. It was the solitary witness of the last act of a tragedy. The Prince K. was more than a kind patron—an almost friend to[Pg 14] me. He valued my apprehension of art, and shadowed me from the hour I first began to paint little Gretchen carrying her father's cobblings to their owners. He bought the picture, and ceaselessly employed me to make sketches of her in some way or another—as a queen—as a boy—as a danseuse. He loved to see her in all disguises, for she had the true model's faculty for lending herself to, and developing every pose. Then came the question of marriage—it is inevitable when a man meets a girl with eyes like altar lights, clear and holy beacons of God. Marriage, between a prince of the blood and the child of a shoemaker!"

[Pg 14]

Bentham gave vent to a low laugh, which was quite devoid of merriment. It is the trick of those who spend their lives in plumbing the unfathomable; it translates the meagreness and vacuity of their lore.

"Of course the family was outraged," he went on; "his mother appealed, grovelled on her knees, so it is said, and in the end he gave way. 

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