d for beauty--had succumbed to both in
spirit oftener than in the caprice of some inconsequential amourette.

But never, until he came to know Valerie West, had a living woman meant
anything vital to his happiness. Yet, what she aroused in him was that
part of his nature to which he himself was a stranger--a restless,
sensuous side which her very isolation and exposure to danger seemed to
excite the more until desire to control her, to drive others away, to
subdue, master, mould her, make her his own, obsessed him. And he had
tried it and failed; and had drawn aside, fiercely, still watching and
determined.

Some day he meant to marry properly. He had never doubted his ability to
do so even in the sordid days. But there was no hurry, and life was
young, and so was Valerie West--young enough, beautiful enough to bridge
the years with him until his ultimate destiny awaited him.

And all was going well again with him until that New-year's night; and
matters had gone ill with him since then--so ill that he could not put
the thought of it from him, and her beauty haunted him--and the
expression of Neville's eyes!--

But he remained silent, quiet, alert, watching and waiting with all his
capacity for enduring. And he had now something else to watch--something
that his sensitive intuition had divined in a single unfinished canvas
of Neville's.

So far there had been but one man supreme in the new world as a great
painter of sunlight and of women. There could not be two. And he already
felt the approach of a shadow menacing the glory of his
sunlight--already stood alert and fixedly observant of a young man who
had painted something disquieting into an unfinished canvas.

That man and the young girl whom he had painted to the astonishment and
inward disturbance of Jose Querida, were having no easy time in that new
world which they had created for themselves.

Embarked upon an enterprise in the management of which they were neither
in accord nor ever seemed likely to be, they had, so far, weathered the
storms of misunderstandings and the stress of prejudice. Blindly
confident in Love, they were certain, so far, that it was Love itself
that they worshipped no matter what rites and ceremonies each one
observed in its adoration. Yet each was always attempting to convert the
other to the true faith; and there were days of trouble and of tears and
of telephones.

Neville presented a frightfully complex problem to Valerie We