that side of her, but I can assure you there's plenty to it. She has some marvelous links with the outside.'

"Some change in Denis' expression must have halted the speaker here, for there was a considerable spell of silence before the words went on. I was utterly taken aback, for I'd expected no such overt development as this, and I wondered what my son could be thinking. My heart began to pound violently, and I strained my ears in the frankest of intentional eavesdropping. Then Marsh resumed.

"'Of course you're jealous—I know how a speech like mine must sound—but I can swear to you that you needn't be.'

"Denis did not answer, and Marsh went on.

"'To tell the truth, I could never be in love with Marceline—I couldn't even be a cordial friend of hers in the warmest sense. Why, damn it all, I feel like a hypocrite talking with her these days as I've been doing.

"'The case simply is, that one phase of her half hypnotizes me in a certain way—a very strange, fantastic, and dimly terrible way—just as another phase half hypnotizes you in a much more normal way. I see something in her—or to be psychologically exact, something through her or beyond her—that you don't see at all; something that brings up a vast pageantry of shapes from forgotten abysses, and makes me want to paint incredible things whose outlines vanish the instant I try to envisage them clearly. Don't mistake, Denny: your wife is a magnificent being, a splendid focus of cosmic forces who has a right to be called divine if anything on earth has!'

"I felt a clearing of the situation at this point, for the abstract strangeness of Marsh's expressed sentiment, plus the flattery he was now heaping on Marceline, could not fail to disarm and mollify one as fondly proud of his consort as Denis always was. Marsh evidently caught the change himself, for there was more confidence in his tone as he continued.

"'I must paint her, Denny, must paint that hair, and you won't regret it. There's something more than mortal about that hair, something more than beautiful——'

"He paused, and I wondered what Denis could be thinking. Was Marsh's interest actually that of the artist alone, or was he merely infatuated as Denis had been? I had thought, in their school days, that he had envied my boy, and I dimly felt that it might be the same now. On the other hand, something in that talk of artistic stimulus had rung amazingly true; so that 

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